Way back in 2015, I announced, on this very blog, how I was going to try to find the positive things in life. I vowed to complain less and stay positive. I even started compiling a gratitude list. Because as many of my more spiritual friends have told me, it's important for your aura.
Well, that didn't work out.
In 2016, this country put the most ill-qualified man in the White House. Ad agencies started flooding the freelance market by firing off any senior staffer over the age of 30, and my gratitude list was used to wipe up some spilt soup when we ran out of paper towels.
Today, in the summer of 2020, we find ourselves in the most dire of straits I can recall in all my 44 years.
However, despite the greater degree of difficulty, I'm trying to look on the bright side of life. And I seem to have found it in the stack of mail that regularly piles up on the kitchen counter near the ubiquitous junk drawer.
Not only are all my credit card bills, and I've lost count how many there are including ones carried by my wife as well as the ones carried by my daughters in case of emergency, all been paid off, the incoming balances during the past 10 weeks of hibernation are down.
Way down.
We haven't been to a restaurant since March. And sadly the last one we went to was All Vegan. Which wasn't altogether bad, but it's all overshadowed by the awful taste of Cauliflower Chicken Wings. Sorry Paul and Deanna, that's just not right.
Nor have we been to a movie, a mall or even a supermarket. Meaning there's no charges on my card for $6 lattes, $10 iced teas, or $17 buckets of popcorn.
In other words, we're spending less, saving more and discovering a life of inconspicuous consumption. An anathema to the American way of life. As a result, distancing ourselves from the possibility of ending up in a dirty nursing home (my worst nightmare).
It's the silver lining in all this.
And while we don't miss the things money can buy, we do miss the company of friends and family that money can't buy.
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