Painful Optimism

lol...a cynical approach to optimism!

I am often misunderstood as being a negative person. The key word here is "misunderstood". I am not a negative person. I do, however, have a cynical sense of humor with sarcasm as not a second language, but part of my everyday vernacular. 

That may be where the misunderstandings begin. 

I'm actually painfully optimistic.

I think it is because I want to "force" good outcomes and things to work out so badly, that I get discouraged, depressed and plain exhausted quickly. It certainly explains part of the reason why I burned out with teaching. I wanted to go in there and "save the world". Then reality kicked me in the butt and I burned out fast. 

I become comfortable with the illusion that I'm some sort of immortal and I try to use my super powers, only to find out I do not have any and I was a mere mortal the whole time.

Now that's depressing! lol  

And yet, I never seem to learn. I end up doing it again with something else. 

But the result often looks like this:

I might act like a witch at times, but I obviously never had the powers to fly...

My mortal limitations have really hit me hard this week. I've been training for the Neon Dash 5K, which is this weekend. And yet, my typical work-outs have proven too arduous. It's been so frustrating. I've been able to make and obtain these goals for months - especially since the Color Run last January.

And this week, I haven't been able to accomplish the same running times and distances. 

I know part of it is the warmer temperatures. That is why my work-outs always struggle through the summers. But it is also due to Chris's crazy overtime schedule lately. We've barely seen him. Therefore, I've been doing double parent duty. Combine that with trying to accomplish things around the house as we prepare for this move and feeling so overwhelmed, and it's no wonder I smack into a pole.

Not quite, but that looks amazing!

And it was a miracle we made it to church on Sunday with only one mortal parent running the show. Sundays are always tough for me (for a myriad of reasons that I do not wish to get into right now), so having to herd three spirited kids alone, certainly added to the challenge. 

On the way there, I had to drop off a prescription, so we pull up to the drive thru window of the pharmacy. As we did so, Alexander yells, "Give me the money!"

The other two kids laughed and figured out he was acting out this scene from Spongebob. Therefore, after that, Mikelle did the only natural thing to do. She recorded him doing it again. Click below to watch - sorry for his screaming from seconds 4 to 6. You might want to lower the volume:

Alexander's impressive knowledge of Spongebob trying to commit a crime. 

Judge me for any of this all you want (letting the kids watch Spongebob...breaking the Sabbath...whatever you want to judge me on), but we made it to church, didn't we? I call that a victory!

Now if I can only accept my mortal limitations.