"but you don't count."

that's my daughter's response, at times, to advice i give her. you know, life advice, the fatherly kind. i ask her what that means, why i don't count. she says my advice doesn't count because i love life too much, i love my job too much, i love my wife and marriage too much, i love every waking morning too much. because you like everything you're doing, nothing is work or hard for you so you don't count. the bad and good news of this is she is right. mostly right at least.

when i wake up on monday, every hour of the next week is already planned. and aside from a sixty minute block scheduled every day, called my admin windows, where i deal with all those things like bills and email and such, i love everything on my schedule, even my work. i have to use timers in my day to tell me to stop doing this thing i enjoy so i can start doing this next thing i enjoy. these transitions kinda look like, "ahhhh suck" to "hey cool!". so yes, bella is sort of right that it's hard to take advice from a pollyanna like that. pollyanna, if you don't know, is a reference to a little girl who only saw the good in everything, and when that's how you roll, it can start getting a touch irksome to all sorts of folks.

fact is, i just learned something about myself (well in addition to my opinions not counting). pessimist hate me. well lots of people hate me as i've always had a bit of a polarizing personality. a few people seem to enjoy my company but lots if not most find me annoying. i've recently learned the first and surest test of this is if someone is a pessimist. when that is the case i am for-sure, one thousand percent not a person they are going to want to hang out with.

since leaving the university and starting a company all of this happy-joy-having has increased, exponentially so. namely because i don't have to put on pants before noon most days. when my family sees me around the house in my underwear they say, "uh-oh, dad has his work pants on, don't disturb him". recently marty has had multiple people comment to her how happy i seem lately, kinda prodding her to let them in on the real dope thinking she has some intel that it is a sham or drugs that make me seem the way i am. but instead she has to report, almost with a sigh, that yes he really is that happy, and acts like that most of the time. i must say i do sense more than a tinge of annoyance in marty's voice in these moments and think she somewhat shares bella's sentiment that it shouldn't count because i have it too good (what saves us here is that marty knows that all the good in my life stems from large part her, marty--and/but, for all sorts of in-the-folds-reasons, my mother gets the super-lion-share of credit) .

i want to argue that my take on things should count more, but i can't stop smiling long enough to form a proper counter-argument. well, that and it's not on the schedule.