Joke's on me for Make a Difference Monday

Optimism. That's my Make a Difference Monday goal for each of you.

Make a difference in your own lives by turning something negative, frustrating, annoying and/or headache-inducing into something positive -- a thought, a future, an activity, a plan...

But here's why the joke's on me today: it's been an incredibly challenging day so far and it's only 2:03pm. And chances are, it's only going to get worse.

Not so optimistic there, huh?

When Scott and I were at dinner with friends the other night, the conversation had turned to flying with small children and how insanely difficult it is. I don't think there's a parent in America that would disagree with that statement.

But instead of focusing on the challenges of taking off toddler shoes in Security or the endless laps up and down the plane corridor or the futility of keeping a kid from pounding and kicking on the seat in front of him... I tried to put a positive spin on the situation.

Yeah, it sucks. But at least we're not on a wagon for eight months going 14 miles a day. At least we're not spending three weeks on a smelly bus. At least we'll get there in (generally) less than a day!

See? That's the optimism I'm talking about. Looking at otherwise challenging situations and making them look not quite so bad.

Most of the time, I'm pretty good about doing this for myself. It's raining for the twenty-second straight day? The flowers will be incredible. Stuck in stand-still traffic? No one's going so fast that there could be a fatal accident.

You get the picture.

But now picture my day today...

8:15am: Should be awake, but I'm not. Until Emma comes in signing to me that she's too sick to go to school. Again.
9:15am: I try to print out my boarding pass for my flight down to Sacramento tmro, only to find that I booked the ticket wrong and my flight was actually last week.
9:20-1:20: Spend all this time trying to figure out how to get to Sac anyway. Thwarted, thwarted, thwarted. But finally got Scott to call and get it all straightened out. (What would I do without him?)
1:30: Trying to copy something onto a cd for my mom, but there was an error. Now my cd player won't even open to spit out the apparently bad disc.
1:40: Working. I hate Support. I can't even face it. Feel like crying. Or screaming. Or changing the world's calendars to read March 26th. That's my last day as Virtual Punching Bag for Clueless Software Users.

Normally I would have no problem feeding all this into my Optimism Optimizer. Just not feeling it today, though.

Which is why it's ironic that I had planned today to be Optimism Day for Make a Difference Monday.

Haha. (Can you feel my total lack of enthusiasm in there?)

I know all you Delicious Readers can be more successful at this than I am today. Go forth and Optimisticate the world!