As I mentioned before, dear reader, I’ve been trying to convert my eye-rolling cynicism into a more healthy stoicism, and it’s probably time for a progress report: things are going swimmingly.  One technique that has been proving helpful has been negative visualization.  Yeah, I know, hippies…hear me out.  If you begin every day with some bullshitty Disneyesque positive meditation about how great and fair the world is, how all of your fellow human beings are really decent people who would never intentionally hurt you or fuck you over, and how everything happens for a reason, that life is a journey, and all that other god-awful twaddle, you’ll start your day off in a terrific mood, only to have each of the above false platitudes disproven repeatedly before noon, only to end your day in a fit of jaded disappointment, depression, and defeat.  That’s a terrible idea.  Instead, follow the teachings of Marcus Aurelius:  “Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be met with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”  Mine goes something along the lines of: “This entire day is going to be filled with explaining the obvious to completely self-centered yet somehow totally un-self-aware idiots who aspire to learn in this lifetime a fraction of what I had already forgotten by the time I was 30, and I’m expected not only not to murder any of them, but to actually smile and maintain relationships with as many of them as possible.”  I come to truly accept this as reality (which is, alas, not particularly difficult seeing as how the day before was likely spent doing this exact that).  But then, in the middle of the day, when some point of light comes along and actually makes you laugh or teaches you something or shows you a different or new perspective, the day is suddenly great.  And at the end of such a day, when you lay your head on your pillow and wait for the propofol to hit, you can’t help but be pleased by how wrong you were in your pessimistic morning assessment.

This might not work for you, but it’s been most effective for yrs. truly recently.

N.P.: “The Undertaker – Vagina Mix” – Puscifer