The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The other morning I heard an NPR no doubt woke commentator prescribe a healthy dose of something, anything, upbeat to jumpstart our mornings, you know, set a more positive spin on the day, one that might last past noon. As a morning reader of two newspapers and multiple internet newsfeeds, I’m the poster child for beginning my day with mostly bleak harbingers for the morning, noon and probably afternoon, everything from ICE raids to indictments of the President’s detractors, Cat 5 hurricanes to vaccine deniers, gerrymandering to Gaza, on and on, basically doomscrolling for a less than cheerful breakfast. Even Dear Abby is consistently depressing. Cue the kitten videos, I guess. Or the makeup and clothing Influencers.

Maybe it’s time to mix a jigger or three of whiskey in that early morning cuppa joe, take the sharp edges off reality, give a good mood a fighting chance, probably need a nap early in the afternoon and then reload on the whiskey to plow through the evening, won’t need more coffee.

Outside our window the world really isn’t all that bleak or depressing. Sure, the mail comes late, it sometimes rains, occasionally I have to make that hellish drive up north for groceries and supplies, the power goes out in windstorms — but otherwise life is pretty peachy. Almost a sin to be depressed. Hellfire, it IS a sin to be anything but cheerful.

I didn’t move to the edge of a continent, the end of an island, the last vestige of the American Century to drown myself in the tears of the doomsayers. Maybe I didn’t reach escape velocity from Reality, but … I gave it a damn good shot. And if anyone thinks I’m plummeting back to terra firma, think again. Reality is in large part our own making — just ask most of us artists or musicians. Paint the world as you want it, then step inside the canvas. Oh, and don’t let those brushes dry out — it’s an ongoing process. Maybe every day. Like the NPR lady said….

I have it on good report that the happiest people are us old people. If that is true, the youngsters must be miserable as hell, burdened by anxieties of global warming, AI Apocalypse, Gaza, Ukraine, pandemics, income inequality, not to mention the upcoming elections they see as the last gasp of Old White Guy Geezers engaged in political warfare. Kind of puts a cold blanket on breakfast every morning, I bet.

When I was young and foolish, I lived with a lot of anxiety. Bad marriage, bad jobs, bad apartments, crummy cars. Viet Nam, Nixon, Civil Rights, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The future, what little I could conjure, didn’t seem bright. Throw in the Bomb, Cuban Missile Crisis, we all had the nuclear jitters to boot, the very real possibility of the end of mankind as we knew it, one dystopian nightmare after another. Maybe we all have to create our bogeymen then learn to live through it.

Course now we have all this existential angst to contend with, climate change going to end civilization, Trump going to end democracy, new diseases going to finish off what Covid couldn’t, the world gone mad! China ascendant, Russia back to the Cold War, social media making zombies of our kids, the Middle East about to erupt, immigrants pouring in over every border, not just here but everywhere. Droughts, famine, plagues and pestilence! Lions, tigers and bears, oh no!

But maybe, who knows, the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket just yet. I know, some evangelicals wish it would, Second Coming, good times right after the Apocalypse, signs everywhere if you have the right kind of eyeglasses and a few Bible verses to consult. I sometimes think we manifest what we believe, call it my own brand of hocus pocus. Maybe we create reality, not the other way around. Why not? Meaning, at least in my cosmology, better to be optimistic and a much safer bet to think positively. If I’m wrong, tell me after the End Times, why don’tcha. Meanwhile, stay calm and carry on.