The End, or The Beginning

And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.

(Junot Díaz)

If this quote has a more profound meaning than something like a new year beginning and an old year ending, sorry, its gone right over my head.  You will just have to figure it out for yourself.

I have my own conundrums to sort.  Somewhere back in 2016 I lost my joy of writing.  I would like to find it again. Maybe I lost the joy in a lot of things and that’s the root of my problem in a rather joyless year for the world in general.

But, you know, who the hell wants to hear about all that all over again.

Today my right knee hurts for no good reason and it’s making me sad.  See, this is what I find myself doing.  Complaining to whoever will listen (even if it’s only the little voices in my head) about insignificant crap. And if I were to write down these whiny complaints, that would just magnify shit.  No one needs shit magnified, do they?  So then I don’t write anything at all for a day, or a week, or nearly a month, and that’s easy, and it becomes a habit which gets progressively harder and harder to break.

So here is my brilliant plan for 2017 to blog my merry way to happiness.  Because for me, blogging was once joyous. I’ve set my goal at mildly entertaining for now and will work my way back up.

I have created a new category called “2017 Book of Lists”.  I will make lists of good things.  There are always good things.  If I can’t immediately see the good things I will list the bad things, but only as a last resort.  And only if they are so bad they’re funny.

Here are some good things that happened today.

1.  I used up the bag of leftover taco hamburger from the freezer.  No one is more surprised by this than me, except maybe for W who is always surprised when I spend longer than 15 minutes in the kitchen.   Normally I freeze leftovers and throw them out once I’m not really sure what they are anymore.
2. The cheesey potato hamburger casserole I made was edible!  No, you know what? It was GOOD.  Or we were both abnormally hungry.  It could go either way.
3. I also used up a bunch of apples that had seen better days by slicing them up and covering them with a sort of cake batter before baking them.  It was a nice change from apple crisp.  My mom used to make something like it, juicy sweet moist apple cake, maybe called Apple Brown Betty, but also maybe not.

Perhaps I should have called this a list of FOOD things that happened today.  Whatever, I am off and running, day one done like dinner.

Happy first day of January, what always seems to me to be the longest month of the entire year.  I don’t think filling it up with lists will make it any shorter, but ‘more fun’ is a possibility.  Hey, getting blown up by an asteroid is also a possibility, would you rather have that?  Yeah I didn’t think so.

Just Jazzy 273

Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 60

Happiness is seeing a psychic who tells you nothing but good things, and then throws in some weird healing magic at the end for good measure.

Nothing Lasts Forever

image from weheartit.com

Good things and bad things – they all come to an end eventually.  How profound was that, hey?  Don’t worry, there’s no deep and philosophical hidden message here.  More like a whining complaining mini rant about things over which I have no control.  Because I suck at endings and goodbyes.

Somebody told me I won’t be able to get my favourite erasable ink retractable pen anymore because they’re no longer being made.  WHAT??  That was shock number one.  I’m kidding, that wasn’t too horrible.  Shock number one is that Trifecta is ending and will not be issuing amazing challenges any more!  I know, I can’t believe it either.  I love Trifecta. This is like when great bloggers just wander off into the sunset and don’t keep up their amazing blogs and you wonder whatever happened to them and hope they didn’t die or something.  So all you bloggers out there who decided to just up and quit, please drop me a line that says hello, I’m not dead, if you’re not actually dead.

Our second year contact lens student who will be double licensed in June told me yesterday that she is going to apply for a management position that is coming available soon.  When these opportunities present themselves it’s best to make it known that you’re interested and available.  I know this, and mostly I applaud her ambition and wish her well.  But another selfish little part of me hopes she won’t get it and she’ll stay where she is working with me.  Because how is this not way better than anything else you could possibly imagine.  Anyway, that’s potential upset number two.

And now, the third shoe drops, (there are always three shoes)  I have just received an e-mail from my Avon lady telling me she is quitting Avon and doing something else instead and this week will be the last time she takes and delivers orders.  She breaks up our relationship with an e-mail!  I want to look her in the face and tell her how incredibly disappointed I am in her, because I was one of those customers who always ordered stuff, even when I didn’t need anything in particular because not ordering made me feel guilty.  Okay, I’ve just convinced myself that this ending isn’t such a bad thing after all and I don’t really need to get in her face.

Other endings that are not bad ones:

1.  Daylight Savings Time  (Who decided that taking an hour off the beginning of the day and tacking it on to the end of the day made the day longer?  Some jerk, obviously.)

2.  Trilogies.  After a long beginning and an equally long middle, I just want the story to get over itself and end already.

3.  Illnesses like flu and skin rashes and indigestion and hangovers. Yes, hangovers are an illness.  If you’ve ever had one, you know this.

4. Winter

5.  Bad relationships

6.  Good hair cuts, because that means the bad ones also go away.

7.  Candy Crush levels that cause serious fits of anxiety and temporary pattern baldness.

8.  Crazy work days and work weeks and all work of any kind.

9.  Headaches

10.  Monopoly at McDonald’s so we can go back to coffee cups with stickers you collect to get a free cup of coffee.  That way everybody wins.

So there are good endings.  And I know when something wonderful ends it simply means there will be a new beginning of some other wonderful thing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wallow in misery for a bit and feel sorry for myself and pout and whine about it.  It’s my way of accepting whatever happens.  Nobody said it was pretty.