Dear Reader,

This is happening.  It is happening now, and I'm going to publish something.  There are a couple unpublished posts that got started, but I ran out of steam or energy or courage to keep them going.  This one is going to be different.

It's not been a good couple of weeks.  There are family issues happening, work issues happening, humanity keeps showing off how awfully we treat each other... This has gotten me down in a fairly serious funk.  I go to work... I do my shopping... I try to operate as normal, but there's an anxiety lurking behind the scenes that I haven't been able to shake.  It would be wonderful if I had a secret to share, of how I broke past the funk and am now coping wonderfully with everything.  But that's the thing... Shitty things keep happening in the world around me, and it makes me sad.  Why do we do it?  You can stand behind your assorted ideologies... well, not YOU, dear Reader, but you get my drift, right? Political; religious; sociological; economical... take your pick. If you want, you've got your justification ready for you...

And I can't tell you how to connect the dots from that paragraph above to how I am coping right now, but somehow I've decided that I need to forget what everybody is trying to tell me.  I know what's right and good, and I'm just going to strive to be nice to people.  I'm making a conscious effort to be pleasant and understanding and patient.  So, here's to trying, right?