My own kind of blue

Maybe it’s a late-winter slump or maybe it’s coming out of one. Maybe I’m just feeling the teasings of spring; you know how those 70+-degree days make you feel, even if it is followed by a string of days in the 40s?

Whatever it is, lately I go around annoyed by all this doom and gloom everyone has so easily fallen into. As if the season itself weren’t depressing enough, everyone feels this need to gear every conversation about the economy and the how it is going to bring about the end of the world as we know it.

Look, no one has more reason to be pessimistic than we here at Linguini on the Ceiling. Three out of four of us have no steady job -- only sporadic “projects” that keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. The industries wherein lie our expertise have been decimated and there are (at least here in the valley) hundreds of applicants for every low-paying, entry-level position. I could go on and on with the suckiness of the Linguini situation, but that would be doing the very thing that irritates me.

See, there is also this other thing. In a way it’s a good thing because otherwise last year when we lost two houses and the bank seized every penny we had, I would have done the logical thing and had a nervous breakdown. I could have spent those following painful months in a nice, quiet psych ward, drifting in a mist of valium. Oh, I would have emerged six months later to a family divided, bitter and in ruin, but it would not have been my problem because my delicate condition would exempt me from blame.

Believe me, I tried to have a nervous breakdown. But my brain is a survivor. It always, always, always manifests hope.

Hope. Every time. I don’t know how or where it comes from. There I am, on my way to a perfectly justified emotional meltdown – and – oh, look! A bluejay.

And because of the bluejay – or whatever catches my eye at the time – there’s the hope.

And, honestly – at the time it makes me really, really angry because insanity by contrast seems so peaceful, so much easier than duking it out with life.

My point is, when you approach me with your furtive looks of impending disaster, I’ve probably got the bluejay on my mind; I’ve probably got a plan that is seeing me through, even if there is a slim chance of it working. And you, you’ve read something or watched something or talked to someone and now you feel the need to share your feelings of disaster, not only as it applies to your life, but also, as a bonus, how it applies to mine.

Well, knock it off.

If not for me, for your own sake. Knock. It. Off.

Because here’s a secret that no one seems to get: We are the economy.

The economy isn’t “out there.” It’s us and what we do and how we feel. When we felt competitive and materialistic, the bloated economy reflected that. Now everyone is scared and expecting disaster and – guess what?

So, for Godsake, people, just live your life. I am as frugal as my personal economy dictates, but who I am is not my personal economy. I have other things to talk about, like books and writing and dogs and...

Look! A bluejay!