Excellent Day, Lame Night

Yesterday, my plans to make the most of life succeeded without a doubt. I went on a challenging yet non-life threatening adventure with a group of friendly strangers. I learned that I can climb rocks without shredding my skin, exhausting my muscles, or cracking my skull open. Indeed, I can carry my weight. I did not allow the nutty woman with the grating voice to irritate me to the point of losing my cool. I made sure to speak to some kind of cute guys who were my age and didn't seem insane. I met some young people from the middle east and we talked about music, culture, food, history, and politics. I saw spectacular views and amazing raptors in their natural habitat.

So hurray for me for choosing awesomeness yesterday. After that, I wonder why I went on to chose to have a lame night.

Sure, I was tired, but I didn't go to sleep. My night began with a re-run of a Nova program on human evolution. Things devolved into a festival of frozen waffles. I could have gone to the free telescope demo thing in Center City. I could have knitted. Hell, I could have done chores. Out of many useful and fun options, I chose lameness. When I finally went to bed, I had a nightmare in which one of my coworkers was fired and I fell off a bridge.

So, hopefully yesterday has taught me that I can chose to be excellent or chose to be lame. Being lame is not inevitable. The only reward for choosing to be lame is the reinforcement of my lame habits and beliefs. I imagine two lameless gremlins are to blame. I'll call the first one Whimpy. The second one is Scold. They are a tag team of miserly. Whimpy sighs. "Oh, you want to go out again and get on the trolley? That's so hard. And to do what? Look at Jupiter through a telescope with some strangers? It'll be cold. No one will be there but freaks. It's not independent and inquisitive. It's dorky. You're not even that good at science. You'll feel lonely and out of place. Why risk disappointment? Just stay home. You'll probably get bored and eat too much, but it won't be disappointing." Now Scold is gloating about my lame night. "You see, I told you. I told you if you stayed home you would just indulge in sloth and gluttony. Lazy pig!"

Well, bite me, gremlins. My day was excellent, and there's nothing you can say about it.