Guarded Cynicism?

Was holed up in home today, mainly because I'm too damn tired to do anything. Part of me knows I ought to get going, get some good running kilometres in to burn the Christmas flab (trust me, it's a significant amount, being the gourmand that I am), do something great like getting a license to pilot a plane or do something more realistic like finally getting to sign up for some driving lessons. (Which I don't exactly want or need, but social pressures dictate that I have to have.)



Pretty frustrating eh? I won't have any car to drive, nor will be planning to buy one in the forseeable future. It'd be a fun skill to learn, but that's a skill I already have, as proven by that green slip of paper I possess called a military driving license.

I need all the help I can, to find a way to get it done as soon as possible, within the electives period that ends in May.

Argh. What I'm gonna do is to haul my ass to SSDC at Yio Chu Kang tomorrow to see what I can do about it. Which reminds me, I oughta refurbish my assshauling foldie bicycle soon.

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Been thinking about optimism and pessimism. I've been told I'm pessimistic. Is it really true?

There are optimists around who had gotten what they wanted from sheer optimism - people who try and and try and try and finally succeed at what they wanted. William Tan comes to mind. (What the NUS article failed to mention is that he did not get his medical degree in NUS - judging from the past enrolments, it is highly unlikely they would accept anyone with a significant physical disability.)

But really, how likely is it?

Anyone might get what they want if they try hard enough, but it's not equally likely for everyone. I might have a steel determination to say, become a fighter jet pilot, or a Tour de France winner - indeed those are really fun jobs that I'd prolly get a kick off - but I won't go on applying to the air force or train myself on the hills 24/7 because I know that it's pretty damned unlikely.

It's not that I'm being unreasonably pessimistic, I'm just having a guarded cynicism of the future.

Murphy's law often rears its ugly end into our lives, scraping the fuck outta the paintwork of our bonnets. And we just gotta anticipate them and have contingencies. If I imagine myself dropping out of university and being a cook somewhere, it's not that I'm pessimistic. I'm making a contingency plan. It's unlikely, but when unlikely things happens, it happens 100%.

The way we're taught in medical school how never to talk about small possibilities lightly - "It might just be a 1% chance of a complication, but to the patient it's a 100% of the complication."

Maybe I'd do better to show more optimism, but the stuff under the hood works and had worked so smoothly so fat for me. After all, who can resist a friend who makes you feel good about everything cause he seems to believe in everything sweet and perfect? You don't go on telling friends "oh I don't think you'll do ok in this, but if you put your heart to it you have a fighting chance".

I'd push myself, so as long as the probabilities are good enough for me to accept. But things I know I probably won't succeed in, I'd just forget it and put my heart into something else. Now that's guarded cynicism.

Optimism: Yay this is gonna be so fun! I just know it is!

Pessimism: Meh. It's prolly gonna be another crap event.

Guarded cynicism: I'm gonna test the waters and see if I can find fun here, but I won't keep my hopes up because most of my friends hated this event.

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And YAY for the first time I've got fun things to do this Friday and Saturday! And I got 2 new buddies on my MSN contact list! Today's a good day, even if it doesn't feel like it.