An Unintentionally Motivational Post

When I was little, we used to have some sort of family time most nights before bed. Not every night but, you know, consistency is difficult with so many people in one house. But we'd read from this book that was supposed to teach us life-lessons and then we'd talk about it and that was fine but I always wanted to skip past it because after that we'd talk about our "blessings" from the day. It was nice because not only did it force you to admit, even at the end of a terrible and disappointing day (like the worst day in history the history of the 90's, when Bill Clinton was elected president and the democrats were going to take over the world and then force us to do shameful democratty things) that something not-awful probably did happen. And not only that, but you got to hear about the lives of the other people living in your home. You got to hear about it from the perspective of what they liked about it, too.

It seems like so often, by the end of the day (okay, more realistically, by 10:00 am) everyone's Facebook statuses are about the awful things that have happened. Like, there was road construction on my way to work so I thought I was going to be late and that stressed me out. Or how I left to go get breakfast but then I realized that I left my debit card at home so I had to drive back home and get out of my car and then get back into it. Ugh! Or someone wanted me to straighten their glasses because they fell on them, and I was grossed out because of all of the goo gunked up in the nose pieces and I wanted to throw up (seriously, folks, here's a happy tip from your neighborhood optician: wear your glasses into the shower every once in a while and let the steam clean them just a little bitty bit).

When you're not enjoying yourself, it seems to take so much longer to go through a day. I don't know why it's so easy to just give up on the day so early and then count the hours for the day to end. And why do we want the day to even end? We'll go to bed and tomorrow will be the same that today was unless we make a point to make a change. You know what I mean? And also no one else has any fun.

I certainly don't mean to sound all motivational, here. I don't want to be the guy who's like, "You're in charge of your attitude!!" (even though I truly believe that we are) "Never, ever be discouraged!" But, you know, maybe let's try extra hard to not see all of the worst possible versions of our own reality, sometimes.

In her book, Intimations of Mortality (which was written during the course of her terminal illness and published posthumously), Violet Weingarten said "Problem stated at its most succinct--is life too short to be taking shit or is life too short to mind it?" Maybe let's take think on that a little bit, today.

Some mornings I have to pep-talk myself out of bed. Some days, I press "snooze" and lay in bed dreading getting out of it until the very last moment. This morning was easy for me, though, because I ran out of coffee creamer yesterday. I can't take my coffee with just milk and sugar. That stuff is terrible. And powdered creamer is flammable and so I don't really feel like drinking it. So I need that stuff. The ultra-sugary stuff in the milk section of the grocery store. But it's so expensive. So I took to the interwebs to find a recipe to make it myself. Of course I found it.
So getting out of bed was easy, today. In fact, the fact that my coffee pot has a self-timer is what gets me out of bed most every day. It's nice to have a treat first thing in the day.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?
If you thought about the relief-points of the day before you went to sleep, what would they be?