Thank you for attending my morning pep talk of rekindling after that most recent dark night of the soul.  I hope that you found it illuminating. 

This is probably the time to tell you that there are only two things in this life I'm an absolute complete acknowledged failure at no matter how hard I have tried: knitting and pessimism.  

(I swear I have attendant fairfolk who just placing knitting near me will snarl the yarn up just for fun.... It happens while sewing as well,  though that I can more easily unknot and fix before starting the next stitch. Most of the time.  It does not ever happen to weaving or friendship bracelet knot work,  but it does happen with knitting,  crocheting,  embroidery, and sewing that I set my hand to or that is left too near to me.)  

As for the pessimism. There's an anecdote from when I was about 9 years old of my little sister (who was always a glass half empty type growing up) accusing me during a fight of being good at everything without really trying. O have no idea why she thought that or it was upsetting her,  but this story starts with her angrily accusing me of being good at everything I bothered to try.  And me telling her I didn't know how not to be good at things except by not even trying to do them. Then she said,  "Yeah?  Well I know one thing you can't be good at. I'll always be better than you at pessimism!"  I angrily snapped back,  "I've never tried to be a pessimist" and she said,  "Well I dare you!  I dare you to try to be a pessimist! I bet you finally fail at something no matter how hard you try!" So I did.  I spent like 3 weeks TRYING to be a full on Eeyore  pessimist, bending my entire will to not find bright sides and silver linings to every storm.  And my sister knew,  and she kept teasing me about failing because despite myself I just kept finding a way to spin things bright.  And finally I was just in absolute despair that no amount of effort could make me a pessimist and so I went to her in tears, blubbering about how I just couldn't be a pessimist no matter what I tried.  I just kept trying and trying until I ran out of new ways to try to apply pessimism and no matter what I did,  I just couldn't do it and I'd never ever know what it was to be a pessimist.  And I spent a very maudlin half hour just so beyond all hope sobbing my little heart out pessimistic that I could never be a pessimist.  And finally my sister felt bad for me and she said,  "It's okay Dani.  Pessimism isn't all that great. Trust me.  And,  anyway,  look.  You've lost all hope of being a pessimist and so you've finally experienced pessimism." And I stood perfectly still my eyes lit up and I stopped crying and said,  "You're right!!  I haven't failed at it yet!!  I can still learn to be a pessimist!!  I have time!  If I just keep trying,  I'm sure one day--" At which my sister just started shaking her head and laughing til I realized what I'd just done and started laughing as well.  At which point we agreed that I had absolutely categorically failed at being a pessimist,  even in the depths of my despair that I'd never be a pessimist, and that it was simply my nature that if you give me time my sunny hopefulness will shine through no matter how bad the situation gets to find a way through to something good.  

So that's the story of my failure at being a pessimist even when I sincerely tried as hard as I could to be a pessimist.  😂  And it's how I earned the nickname as a child of "the eternal optimist" from my family.

My advice when I'm in the midst of that over-analytical fatalism is not to let me do anything stupid while I'm feeling defeatist but just allow me to feel it completely until it wears itself out and then my natural solution seeking exuberant optimistic "this side of death, you can do anything if you just choose to keep trying" will reassert itself. And usually it's far more sparkly fierce after a spell of defeatism than it would be without that renewal by purging.

Am I perfect or always act in positive ways even with my optimistic inability to admit defeat? No. I have an overly honest streak of making people face the reality of the situation to make the best possible decisions which gets me in trouble with people who prefer their beliefs/desires over truths they don't want to hear AND I have a streak of self-denying stoic martyrdom to keep going persevere through no matter what it costs me. And that's a fucking dangerous combination when I take off impulsively acting on a logical conclusion built on bad premises. One or both of these traits have been the literal death of me in more than one of my past lives.  And also,  with these powers combined, I can really fuck shit up when I decide to act on sound logic built from faulty premise(s) - you should ALWAYS call me on that if you see it happening,  even if from the outside you can't identify the faulty premise but you know there has to be one because the conclusion is somehow horrifically bad. Because if you don't call me on it when you notice it, I will likely do something spectacularly stupid even if it requires of me that I cut off my nose to spite my face.  

An example of this that is VERY relevant here and of which I have been guilty: Premise 1 - I prioritize Eric's happiness he chooses for himself over my own selfish desires.  Premise 2 - There are people and things he has chosen to build his life around which I know to be integrally important to his happiness. Premise 3 - I don't know my own value to his happiness but since I'm not in his life it must be less than people/things he chooses to be in his life.  Conclusion: I should remove myself from being in the way of the happiness he seeks when I find there is a conflict between people/things his life is built around and me.  Find the bad premise that chain of logic was built on?  It's in the third premise when I go from what I KNOW (that I don't know the value he places on me) linking that to what I ASSUME (that I don't have a place in his happiness he would choose or that my place is less than the other things he cares about) rather than sticking to verifiable/falsifiable premises. I'm still sound stating "I don't know what value I have in his happiness" but the rest is conjecture. I shouldn't build conclusions on conjecture, it should get thrown out with no conclusions to be drawn until I have the data to know what value HE places on me in the happiness he chooses for himself. Not my assumptions about it,  but his actual desires/valuation. But I spent a solid 2+ years trying to act from that conclusion following October 2018 which put a conflict between premise 2 and premise 3 before he finally got me to understand that whether or not I'm physically in his life,  OUR soul bond is integral to his happiness he seeks.  Could have saved us both a damn lot of heartache and learning lessons the hard way if someone had called my attention to the fact that my conclusion was bad because my third premise was flawed by assumptions...  

O!  I just realized that there's also an unstated bad premise to my conclusion here which is the assumed premise that his happiness is an either/or solution to the conflict instead of finding a way to an and solution.  It never occurred to me til just now that maybe his happiness he seeks requires the things in premise 2 AND the things in premise 3 so the only solution that gets him to the happiness he seeks is resolving the conflict so he can have both,  not by removing whichever in the conflict matters less to him.... It's a classic false dichotomy logical fallacy as an implicit premise...   I can't believe I didn't see that unstated flawed premise until just now. Woah.  For fuck's sake Dani,  that was real fucking shoddy work there... i'm going to have to go down an internal rabbithole of self-examination tonight (and for however many days it takes to find the bottom of it) figuring out WHY I assumed it must be a false dichotomy instead of a solution where both must be reconciled into his life for the happiness he seeks.  That's my own shadow work though, figuring out why I assumed that his happiness would require an either/or not an and solution to this conflict. 

And THAT is why I say you should always always ALWAYS check me if you think the logic of my conclusion have bad premises in how I got there... Preferably BEFORE I act based on that conclusion with the bad premise(s) and I royally fuck shit up worse.  Because the thing with bad premises (and thus faulty conclusions) is that it's as hard to see when you're tangled up in it as irrational reactions from strong emotions.  One is from head the other from heart,  but when your subjective perspective is caught up in either it's really fucking hard to see the objective reasons they're going to lead you astray if you act/react without acknowledging the errors in what moved you to the conclusion "this is what I should so."  So please please PLEASE if you are outside my head and you catch me in a conclusion built of good logic on faulty/unstated premises or unconsidered factors,  tell me I'm wrong and call me on that shit as soon as you see it!!  Call me on it so I can correct it and get to better conclusions instead of acting out well-intentioned but potentially toxic "solutions" as the best I can find from the dataset thst I used....  

So my actions and conclusions are not always Annie/Pollyanna or a Pangloss/Leibniz styles of optimism devoid of roots in realism or stoic self-sacrificing denial.  My eternal optimism is the gritted teeth,  "we're still alive so we just keep trying to find a way through and when we make it through this, that's when we get to find and create the beautiful things we only now dream of." It's the optimism of tenacity that if you just keep trying through the failures/mistakes you'll find a solution that gets you out of the dark mess into the open light of new possibilities.

Which is exactly what struggled to the surface in my (lost) battle to be a pessimist and in my pep talk this morning.  

So anyway.  The two things that I accept I am a complete failure at are knitting and pessimism.  And you should know that about me whenever I go through my doubting thomas defeatist bouts.  That I'm wrestling the doubts and giving up hope,  but they never hold the upper hand long with me. 

And you should also know that I give you permission in perpetuity to ALWAYS check me on my bad premises before I act on the conclusions I drew on the bad premise(s) before I do something improbably stupid,  impulsive,  and self-sabotaging.  Not only do I give you permission in perpetuity,  but you will have my undying gratitude if you can call out I have a bad premise to stop me before I impulsively destroy everything because I think it's the best I can do and I'll find my way through it somehow... I have actually never felt anything but gratitude for someone calling me on my bad premise or telling me something important which I should have considered but missed on my own. Genuinely, I prefer to be told "your conclusion is wrong because you missed __________" than to have someone play sycophant and let me run with a dangerously flawed conclusion.  Nip that shit in the bud anytime you see it and I will forever be grateful for you giving me more data/information before I tipped the canoe unnecessarily or sailed us into a motherfucking iceberg we'll be lucky to survive in one piece....  I am not infallible - so call me on things like that if you ever see it.  Always and always and always.  Preferably before I act on the faulty-built conclusion.  Please? Pretty please? With hugs and kisses and eternal gratitude on top.  (you can also have the sprinkles and/or cherry on top of that pretty please if you'd prefer.) 

*yawns* And now,  good night sweet dreams and all that jazz. Early bedtime for me tonight. I am le tired.