I am still an optimist, sort of

I have not totally given up being an optimist, only in some areas. I remain an optimist about my personal future. My weight's going down, my career's going up, and I'm making new friends. The seemingly endless work I've been doing on this fixer-upper I purchased is really starting to pay off, with new parts of house becoming usable. I'm happy about all of this, and I only expect things to continue to get better. And if anything does go wrong, I'm sure it will go right again, eventually. In that regards, I remain an optimist.

No, where my optimism has fled is with respect to the wider world. In the realms of politics, economics, education, and (especially) common sense, my long-held optimism has slowly dissipated. Bill Clinton's second term and two terms of George W. Bush have pushed much of my optimism away. Foreign and domestic extremists, a $27 million Creation "Museum," wars, Fred Phelps, and others helped whittle away at it even more. Sometimes, my optimism of old comes back, but it is a fleetingly optimism, sure to be replaced by cynicism or realism, as the news pours in.

I'll explain in greater depth why my optimism fled in my next post.