Dadmaster: Being an optimist kicks ass! (Mostly.)

Holla to all my optimists out there! Why? Because yesterday I spilled water on my computer. Remember, this is Ivan, the inanimate machine, but still one that took a lot more work on my part than the formation of Daniel.

Naturally, my first reaction was to pull out the plug, while stammering out, “Darn it, dang it, doggone it, shoot, shoot, shoot.” (I may have PG’ed my words a tad.) And after I’d set everything to dry, I felt pretty good. I had unplugged the computer immediately, so I felt awesome knowing that I knew what to do. I still had my phone and my crappy old laptop Cooper, so it wasn’t like I was now unable to do anything. I was no longer able to play my videogames (except for Space Cadet Pinball), but building upon my chicken pit and pumpkin farm in Minecraft wasn’t entirely the best use of my time, anyways. And all my photos and important documents were on Dropbox, Google Drive, and the Amazon Cloud Drive, so I wasn't worried at all. And I had just ripped American Gods and put it on my iPod, so I wasn't inconvenienced there. And besides, only a few drops got inside the case. I set it to dry, and decided to wait a few days.

I'm not a worrier, most times. And that's why being an optimist kicks ass.

However, I do believe there's a small downside to my optimism. Because I already have the notion that everything's going to come up roses, I'm not the most ambitious person. The books I'm writing? Yeah, those are picked up about once a month. The platformer I'm making? The way I see it, I have until DanPar's going to school full-time before it really needs to be done. That weight that I want to lose? It's actually not too bad.

This is one reason why I need my wife.

Without Jessi, I would be working at a bookstore, living with some other people with about as much ambition as me. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I take a look across the wormhole at that parallel dimension and think, "Maaaaaaaan, I could be playing Smash Bros instead of doing dishes" or "Maaaaaaaan, I could be buying a PS9 instead of baby gates" or "Maaaaaaaan, I could be cleaning the meat off of thirty hot wings instead of cleaning baby vomit out of the carpet."

But I believe that my life means a lot more now. I was a teacher for two and a half years, until I became a dad. Now I'm raising a kid. And I think it means even more that I'm NOT an ambitious person, because it's made me combine two parts of my life that seemed to exclude the other. My classroom, the Batcave, involved 80 kids coming through those doors, playing board games to defeat villains, not even realizing the language skills they were building. My passive story-writing has found an outlet in my DnD game, where I only have a few weeks to create a new adventure. My lazy cooking strategy has inspired me to make gourmet meals in the microwave (next post)!

So yeah. I'm a big lazy dude, who finds himself in situations where being lazy is not an option. And the result is, currently, a dad writing in his blog at Panera, editing his friend's story, while taking care of his seven month-old son, wearing matching Batman shirts.

Life is good.
:)

Also, because nothing in this post allowed me the chance to show off my adorable son, here's two photos for the hell of it!