Laughing at Myself

It does not feel like ten years has passed since I first started blogging about my adventures in far-flung places. This blog started as a response to a friend who jokingly told me I should have a website keeping everyone up to date on where I am at any given time.  It has evolved into more than just a vacation log, and it now includes race reports, random stuff I find, relationship venting, and the occasional profound musing.  

In many ways my life has felt not so much like a stream but more like a class-III rapids.  There have been ups and downs, definitely over the past few years, and this year has been no different.  We always try to plan, maneuver, change, tweak, and hope that if we just do this one thing life will be better, it will be different, it will be amazing.  This year it truly hit me, like the anvil in the Wil E. Coyote cartoons, that no matter what you set out to do, shit is going to happen.  There was very clear evidence of this in the delays to close on my new apartment.  No matter how many hoops I jumped through to keep the process moving, regardless of how accommodating I was to deliver, I have to pay a fairly fee to extend my mortgage interest rate because someone else did not deliver on time.  The seller refuses to reimburse me even though I feel this delay is a product of his broker's disorganization.  I have dropped more f-bombs in the past week than in the previous six months combined.  Now before you write me off as being defeatist, I have not thrown in the towel and eschewed all of my goals and ambitions out of frustration with other people's ridiculousness.  If I really wanted to, I could have found a way to get out of the contract.  Quite the contrary, I am pushing through.  If all goes well, I will own my second home within 7 days.  And I'm just getting started....

I have decided to practice equanimity through humor in 2014.  Rather than get all wound up, stressed, and pissed off at the various curveballs thrown my way, I resolved to stare BS in the face, blink a couple times, and then bust out laughing.  Why the heck should I raise my blood pressure and decrease my life expectancy because someone else sucks?!  No way.  Now, I know this may not be the easiest task, and there are some people whom I won't be able to guffaw in their face.  I also acknowledge that my nerves may get the best of me and I won't find much to laugh about.  The key is, I will practice flexing this humor muscle until it is much stronger and becomes a more habitual part of my life.  I'd also like to finally kick my bike anxiety once and for all, but maybe part of that will be to laugh when I feel afraid instead of bursting into tears or dry heaving. If I can stay good-humored when the fit hits the shan, I hope it will help me stay focused and consistent on the things I truly care about.

Thanks for keeping me company over these ten years.  I have appreciated having those of you out there share my journey, especially those of you I have met along the way who found your way to this page and chose to email me.  Have a wonderful 2014, may you have many good times as well as a few good laughs from the blips along the way.  Go have some Champagne and celebrate!

Xoxov