Everything At Once

I can count on one hand the number of times everything has been good at once. Actually, I can count on one finger. It was basically last year around May, for about two weeks. It was good while it lasted, but I should have appreciated it more. Usually, if one part of my life is up and good, there's the other part that's down and bad. I'm not whaa-whaaing about this [1], I realize it's par for the course for most people's lives, and I actually have it much better than probably 70% of the world. Still, I can't help wondering what it would be like to have everything at once.

Cindy and I are the one constant that's always good. Cindy's professional career is usually good, too. Right now it's great. She got a good raise and a great year end bonus. I'm happy for her, she deserves it. My daughter, on the other hand, is not constant. Just when I sort of get to stop worrying about one thing, another pops up. If that gets solved or at least fixed a bit, an old thing rears its ugly head, or a brand-new crisis comes forth. If she's mentally healthy, then she's physically sick. If she's physically fit, then sure enough her emotional well-being is horrible. Usually, of course, it's a bit of both, because some of her emotional stuff directly effects her physically.

Sometimes it's almost a bit too much for me to take, for she's a thousand miles away and there's very little I can do at the spur of a moment after a frantic phone call. Also, there's really only so much you can do for other people; they really do have to help themselves, especially if that "help" is going to be a permanent, life-changing help and not just a short, temporary antidote. Now I'm sounding like John Galt or something. While I'm all for teaching people to fish, they have to be alive to make use of this skill. It's a fine scary line and I don't know where it is with her sometimes.

My own professional career is also inconsistent, too, but I've more or less given up on that a few years ago. By "given up" I mean given up worrying about whether or not I've made a difference to the world (not to my friends or family, but the world in general in a professional, what-have-you-done-to-make-this-a-better-place kind of way). Still, occasionally, this gets to me a bit, too.

Because of this I have to guard myself from unhealthy thinking. For example, when a bunch of things are going well at the same time I often get worried, wondering if there's another shoe about to drop in order to punish me in a sort of schadenfreudeish (pretend that's a word) kind of way for daring to realize my good fortune. Like most people, I don't have to worry about that too often, however.

[1] I mean besides making a blog post about it and all. ;-)