My wife is going to a concert tonight with a friend. It was booked over six months ago and was asked at the time, "are you sure you want to get the tickets" by her friend, as she has late stage cancer that has metastasized and there are no guarantees how long she will be around for now. I have known her for over a decade now and it is incredibly sad that someone so young (early thirties) has spent so much of that time with this, especially since she also has a child who has pretty much only really known her as a patient.
Life sucks a lot at times - more for some than others.
On the positive side though, it means that Smallsteps and I will have the evening to ourselves and plan on playing some games and perhaps, making some popcorn and watching a movie or something, though that isn't her favorite thing to do. She is far more interested in doing something rather than sitting around, but she is also getting a bit of a flu, so I am hoping that she won't be swinging around like a monkey all evening.
She did help us with some of the renovation cleaning however, which she enjoys to be a part of. One of the guys that has been assisting us brought his trailer around so we could fill it with all the left over trash and since we had some extra space, we also loaded it with some of the junk from the garage that has just been taking up space.
I am still hoping that we will be able to insulate the ceiling of the garage before the real winter comes, but that is looking less likely, since we have met some larger costs recently and the cost of materials for insulation have also gone up a lot. This means it looks like even if the electricity prices were better, we are going to be wearing woolen socks.
But, now that the office floor is finally painted and drying, we are able to get things a bit more organized and hopefully, if we are lucky, we will be able to rustle up some cash to buy the cupboards for the office. It will be about a month to dry by the looks, so there is a chance, but again, prices have increased and there is always more "unexpected" costs to come.
Unexpected.
Are they really?
These days, I seem to expect that there are going to be far more costs than we have budgeted for and that things are going to "go wrong" at the most inopportune times. None of the pathways to get anything done seem to be straight, nor do they seem to be smooth these days and I feel that I am more "affected" by them than earlier, even though I think that I shouldn't be, as I have had plenty of experience dealing in the past.
I think this is actually at least partially due to the effects of my own health, as my personality has changed somewhat again, being less patient than I was and also more erratic in my emotional state - which frustrates me no end, as I have spent much of the last two decades doing the work to reduce emotional reactiveness to especially the negative.
I wonder what the last six years would have been like if I hadn't done this.
We can only ever imagine the ramifications of counterfactuals of course, but I do think that I would have been worse off overall and I am generally under the impression that despite the current situation, things can always be worse.
It is a weird way to look at life though, isn't it? Yet it seems common in society that we say things like, "count yourself lucky, it could be worse", rather than looking to actually make things better. In some way, I think this allows us to remain passive and protects us from having to actually do something to improve circumstances.
It is easier to be grateful and accept our lot in life.
For sure it is, but does that mean we are going to feel that our life is more valuable? Does it actually provide us meaning?
I question this a lot because I think that in society in general, we are getting increasingly conditioned to deal with a worsening quality of life, where we are struggling more, but are becoming indifferent to it, instead turning our attention away so we can avoid facing or feeling the full brunt of reality.
Now, I am going to go and play with Smallsteps in an imaginary world of hamsters who make and eat cupcakes to their heart's content. Human imaginations are extremely powerful tools, but I am increasingly questioning if we are using ours effectively as a society to become more creative or, to better avoid having to create anything at all.
Smallsteps and I will now go discuss this with Blackspot, Purpleback and Pinkstripe - the hamsters.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
