Everything will be better when...

During my twenties, I had the annoying habit of creating optimism through contingency. In those years I lived a fairly carefree existence in Vermont, of all places, with my boyfriend (you may know him as Brendan). I was forever eating and drinking with friends, hiking and biking, and buying whatever it was I thought that I needed. But it quickly became my habit, in times of stress, to believe that my personal happiness would come only after something else happened. I remember letting things (stupid things) weigh me down without relief simply because I had relinquished all control. I was so quick to defer to some other event, that I had no choice but to wait out the arrival of my so labeled cavalry. It could have been anything: a big project at work, six feet of snow in May, a persistent sinus infection. Can you see where I'm going with this? As a default, I would say things like "...things will be better when I get through trade show season", or "...things will be better when I don't have this nasty sinus infection anymore", or "everything will be better once I start my new job." I was unrelenting with my scape goat rhythms of life and so they took hold. In fact, I was so unhappily happy with this pattern that it took years to break. Finally, Brendan and I started to give voice to what we'd been doing. It was depressing to realize that we were so deeply married to our habit. For years, we had readily abandoned our chances for contentment in favor of deferment. It took some time, but we were eventually able to seize the day and enjoy it for what it was at that moment. By the way, the reason I thought again about my long retired past-time is that, after seven months of my 3 kids in weekly rehearsals for Willie Wonka, I was on the verge of falling in step with my old ways.