This means that when bad stuff happens, I can just say "Ha! I knew it," and have a weird sense of satisfaction from being proved right. If all goes well, then oh well--I was wrong. I can then enjoy the satisfaction of expecting things to go wrong, and having everything go smoothly. I am proved wrong, in one of the most pleasing ways possible. This sort of attitude is easy--and to some degree infectious. It can often lead to a lazy outlook at life. Because something might go wrong, why bother doing it in the first place? Why even bother? This sort of apathy is quite easy to fall into for even the most skilled of pessimists.
In spite of my pessimism, there are a few things in my life where I choose to remain firmly optimistic, such as with my marriage. Certainly, there was apprehension at first on my part. It's kind of a big decision to decide who you spend the rest of your life with, and it would be silly for me to be pessimistic and assume that your spouse will just end up divorcing you anyway--at least from my standpoint. This probably comes from a decision I made long ago--that I wasn't going to be another one of those divorce statistics. This is a part of my life where I just downright don't want to be a pessimist, honestly because I would be driven mad by just telling myself that something will come along and smash my happy marriage to pieces. That's just no fun. I may be a pessimist, but I'm not a masochist.
There are, however, some parts of my life where I'm not quite sure which side of the fence to sit on. The first thing I can think of, is that my wife and I have been trying to get pregnant for a couple of months now. On the one hand, I am very much excited to be a father, so the prospect of having a kid is wonderful. Then I can try and be as awesome of a father as my dad was for me. I guess you could say that the "I want to be like my dad when I grow up" mentality didn't wear off too much from when I was a kid.To these kind of thoughts, my pessimistic side wants to say that it won't work out anyway. One of us won't be fertile, and we won't be able to have kids at all.On the other hand, however, I'm scared out of my mind to be a father. I've just barely made it into adulthood myself--it's certainly not like I know what I'm doing. I don't have the faintest idea of how to be a dad. The things that I (either purposefully or inadvertently) teach our child(ren) will stick with them for the rest of their lives. Can I even handle that kind of pressure? What if we have a problem child that drives me insane? The pessimistic side of me wants to say, to these thoughts, that we'll get pregnant without even trying. That before I know it, I'll be stressed out of my mind with a high-maintenance child that I wasn't prepared to handle.
Due to the contradicting nature of my thoughts on this matter, it was really difficult to listen to my pessimistic side in this case. It's like having a little man inside my head that yells at me to sit down and stand up at the same time. After a few moments, you just ignore him because he's so obnoxious and doesn't really know what he wants.
I am happy to report that neither of the pessimistic extremes ended up being true, in this case. We didn't conceive the first time we tried, but we aren't infertile either. We do have a little baby girl on the way though! She is due in December around Christmastime, and we are both very excited and happy. So pessimism didn't really help me prepare for the unexpected here, it seems. Maybe I will have to try out this optimism thing a bit more often. Who knows--it might actually work better for me.
On a sadder note, there was something else I was optimistically trying to reach. I applied to get into the Animation program at my university. It is a very competitive program, and only about 20% of the applicants actually make it in each year. I tried to be as optimistic as possible, is spite of brooding doubts of my artistic talents. I scraped together as much as I could and sent off my portfolio a couple of months ago, keeping my fingers crossed.
Sadly, not long after sending my portfolio, I received a letter telling me that I didn't make the cut. They said that I could always beef up my portfolio and try again next year, but I'm not quite sure what to do at this point. I knew from the start how hard it was to get in, but I still secretly hoped that I would make it. I will have to take careful thought and consideration before deciding how to proceed--another year of trying to chase my dreams could end up being rather expensive, considering how much school costs these days.
In spite of this, I am still happy that I at least tried to be optimistic about it. Heck, if I had kept a strictly pessimistic point of view I probably wouldn't have even tried--which would have definitely been the saddest thing I could have done. It isn't the end of the world, and my life will still go on, and I've managed to learn a thing or two on my way--and that's what counts in the end.
