Optimist Time
Pessimism casts a large shadow over everything in my life. . . except where time is involved.
I hate optimists.
Hate is a strong word.
I dislike optimists.
Strongly.
The truth is, I do not even necessarily dislike optimists. I just do not understand them.
At all.
The way they view the world to me is bizarre. Bizarre in a way that would not look out of place in an Oliver Sacks book. Instead of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat it would be titled, The Man Who Mistook Random Events for Proof of a Positive Worldview.
No one who knows me well would ever call me an optimist. I do not think that I am a full-blown pessimist either. A bit of a Gloomy Gus, sure, but not a fulltime Debbie Downer. But I’m not sure—let’s see what the internet has to tell me.
I took a twenty-five question test to determine whether I am a pessimist or whether I am an optimist. Here is the incredibly scientific, methodologically unimpeachable result:
It has to be true. He has a lab coat.
While I tend toward pessimism, it is entirely situational for me. I, like most people, have things that I am exuberantly optimistic, even Panglossian about. I am optimistic to the point of delusion when beginning new things. Especially when planning for how long things will take. These dovetailed when I started this blog. I was certain that I was going to easily crush all of these challenges easily. After all, I had one whole year.
If I were a lifehacker or self-improvement guru, this would be the title of my book about this blog and its challenges.
Not only was I going to crush these challenges, I was thinking about all of the new achievements I was going to pursue after I finished the initial ten. I was going to learn conversational French, write and illustrate a children’s book, learn to juggle etc. But here I am with less than three months to finish, and I am not particularly close to finishing any of my quests. Believe me, I am feeling the pressure to accomplish even one of them before October 2.
I feel that I have been the victim of Parkinson’s law which states:
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
That really applies more to organizations and project management, but I have become bedeviled by this variant:
The amount of time that one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.
In other words, I said it would take me a year; it’s going to take me a year. From my first project in elementary school to now, just past my 47th birthday, I have grossly misjudged how long any task will take. I bite of far too much to chew, flounder and procrastinate, flounder and procrastinate some more, and then rush at the absolute last minute to, hopefully, finish. This worked for years until one day, it stopped working. Much like a rubber band, one can expand and contract only so many times before you either snap or lose all elasticity. Unfortunately, I long ago lost the ability to reliably cram it all in the last minute. Unfortunately, I have no other strategies. Not yet. More about that in the next post. Until then, let’s speak about my pessimism and optimism.
Like many pessimists, I am in love with shiny new situations, but when they inevitably require a ton of effort, don’t align with my preconceived notions and/or idealism, and butt up against reality, I quickly forget that I was excited about the possibility and I start hurriedly retconning my initial wide-eyed optimism as jaundiced pessimism. Retconning like my name was Steven Moffat in the Peter Capaldi years of Doctor Who. By the way, Peter Capaldi is the absolute worst Doctor hands down. I will fight you with fists and feet if you say otherwise. And I will fight you anywhere in the U.S. or the tiny handful of nations that will accept my all but worthless passport. (We’ll be wearing masks, of course).
A bit of advice from Ol’ Bronc: Never play pool against someone who has their own stick; never fight someone who owns their own boxing gloves.
It has taken me most of my adult life to learn that pessimism is another form of distorted thinking. It is not any more realistic than optimism, no matter how many pessimists conflate pessimism with realism, it just ain’t true. My old therapist used to tell me that when I was being especially pessimistic that I was “Wearing [my] shit-colored glasses again.” This is such a great metaphor. It made me see pessimism as kind of comically deluded—this was a huge help in my life. I know that no matter what has happened in my life since then, I am much easier to be around. I may not be cheerful, but I am not the completely dismal prick that I used to be. I have to remind myself that I am capable of making changes, even big ones.
That said, time is ticking on these challenges and I have to find a new strategy to achieve my goals. Because as Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders say,
Thought that time was on your side
But now it's time the avenger
This is the unofficial anthem of this newsletter for the month of July.
Many thanks to all of you that donated to the blog during last week. Like I said, I won’t shake the tip jar often. I will thank each one of you who gave very soon. I had a fantastic birthday—one of the best ever. Thank you all for being a part of my life and reading my words and being such an encouraging group. Many more years. I hope.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@toolatesmart.org
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