Fresh out: First cool front always the best
I had a guy send me an email the other day that read: “Go enjoy retirement with your family…don’t waste what remains.”
In other words – “Wendorf, you could drop dead at any moment, develop a terminal illness, so spend the time you may have left with the ones you love.”
What makes me happy is to get uplifting notes sent to me via email: “Gregg, your time is limited. Go have fun.”
Makes me want to run to the store and grab a back-up bag of adult diapers and a box of suppositories for when the good times really start to roll.
I’m a writer at heart, especially when it comes to newspapers.
What else am I going to do but edit and publish a newspaper? Go build caskets for a living? Work as a greeter at Walmart?
“Hey, bro, pull up your pants because your boxers are showing.”
I probably wouldn’t make it to the noon hour.
I can no longer pass my flight physical, so aviation is no longer my safety net in case the newspaper gig doesn’t work out, but since I’ve been working with newspapers for 44 years now (since Labor Day 1982), with a three-year time-out spent writing and editing magazines (computers and flying) between 1990 and 1993 — it’s pretty evident that I like the newspaper model: To comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.
Can anyone see me with a motor home hanging out at one of the RV resorts, wearing a name tag – “Hi, my name is Gregg.” I could sign up for shuffleboard, square dances, and knitting quilts. We could all talk about our aches and pains and have a field day.
“My rheumatoid toe is acting up again.”
OMG. Hand me the shuffle-board paddle, and I can make your other toe hurt, too.
“Break time, everybody. Who wants a cold glass of prune juice?”
The Age Factor
As I get older, tic-toc, I work even harder to think like a child. I figure that’s one of life’s secrets to a long existence. If I think too much like an adult, it will ruin my happiness; and that’s what life should be about: fun and happiness. Lots and lots of both. Without focusing on maintaining that happy place, life’s trials and tribulations will wear me down until I’m wearing a perpetual frown all the time.
I stumbled across a great quote from Abe Lincoln the other day:
“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
So true. Happiness is indeed a choice we all have. Granted, there are some qualifiers to that statement. If the doc has just said I have less than three months to live, hard to throw a fun party over that bit of news; but that’s not how life works. For most of it, we live our lives without receiving the really horrible news. Yet, we let the little stuff wear us down, like the moron who just cut us off in traffic. Or the fun statement from the IRS: You owe more taxes.
Happy people who choose happiness as a way of life, which includes me, are not held hostage to our circumstances, and we don’t seek happiness from people or from our possessions. We just wake up every day, give thanks for what we have, including another day, and remind ourselves that we are going to be happy today no matter what life throws at us.
“Hey, Wendorf, spare me your philosophical BS. I like being miserable and unhappy.”
You see, right there is what I’m talking about. I think too many people walk around enjoying being miserable. Don’t ask me why, but that’s how they get their jollies.
“Hey, you want to go to a fun party?”
“No, I’m having too much fun being miserable.”
We come hardwired to have fun, be happy. That’s how most of us are as kids if we’re lucky enough to be born with good health, good parents, and a good family.
No reason to change, no matter how old we may get.
Like the Bobby McFerrin song sings: “Don’t worry, by happy.” Bob Marley also did a great cover of the song, but we know why he was so happy. Until he caught melanoma and died at the young age of 36.
Love the Cool Weather
Last but not least, the first real cool front recently blew through the Rio Grande Valley this week. This is what we long for beginning in May when the constant days of 90-100 degree temps set in for the summer, finally coming to a thankful end in October.
The fact that Hidalgo County hit a record this year of more than 100 consecutive days of high temps that hit 100 degrees, just makes the first cool front that much more enjoyable.
This week’s forecast keeps us in the 80s. I’m writing this Monday, but based on the radar and the temps behind the cold front, it looks like the forecast will prove true.
Aaaahhh, I can already feel the cool temps.