Happy, Happy Birthday!
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Happy Cakeday!
If you follow the traditional anniversary gift list you should be lasing cotton:
Anniversary Preferred term Gift
1 year Annual Paper
2 years Biennial Cotton
3 years Triennial Leather
4 years Quadrennial Linen
5 years Quinquennial Wood
6 years Sexennial Iron
7 years Septennial Wool
8 years Octennial Bronze
9 years Novennial Copper
10 years Decennial Tin/Aluminium
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Is two years waiting for a product something to be celebrated?
We are celebrating his contributions to this community.
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Happy cakeday @jrnelson. Been trying to think of a special award that you should get since you have been one the a stalwarts in the thick of every discussion bringing a great perspective to whatever comes up! Thanks for your contributions.
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Well, itâs not like it is an off the shelf product, it was/is under development. Yes, I was disappointed in the predicted time line, but it wasnât done with malice.
More difficult for anyone who doesnât have their hands on one yet⌠but yes - I celebrate the Serendipity of stumbling onto this project.
I celebrate my good fortune at being selected to participate in the pre-release phase.
I celebrate the reawakening of my creative side, and the surprising fact that I actually had the patience to wait it out.
With a glowforge in my hand, I can speak with authority that I celebrate my decision to commit my money and all the time it has taken to get here.
And second only to the machine itself, I celebrate in this community I am proud to be a part of, built around the hopes, dreams and desires of some of the most talented people I have ever met.
No two life experiences are the same, so it is with our perspectives. You have a great deal of knowledge and skill that I donât, but you my friend seem practiced at finding something missing in any situation. The disappointment is tangible, I know. A few months ago I felt it too. Let me say from this side of the fence, for me the wait was worth it. Just my perspective.
My optimism may be naive, and it has proven to be a few times across my life - but I much prefer my outlook has a sparkle on it instead of dirt.
My bet is you will be (mostly) satisfied with your investment of money and time. I hope so.
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I suspect that pessimists are also subject to similar downsides as a result of their outlook on things and in addition they have to live a life of sourness. I plan for failures but I donât count on them. If they occur my planning helps or it doesnât but in the meantime I havenât had an unhappy life 
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Isnât an optimist constantly disappointed when reality doesnât match their expectation and a pessimist happy that things turn out better than expected?
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Well, either way, the disappointment or elation are both periodic. Itâs the prevalent underlying perspective and how that colors your life that I reflect on.
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I was a morose pessimist as a teenager. Wasted a good eight years of life. (Everything was all drama, angst and anger. I put it down to hormones.)
Finally decided that I didnât want to live that way, and it really is that easy. This is the only life we know for certain that we get, Iâm not going to waste it worrying about things I have no control over.
Just deciding I wasnât going to be mad anymore made me stop being mad all the time, and boosted my productivity ten-fold. Canât tell you how much time I wasted worrying as a kid, and it wound up having absolutely no long-term effect on my life.
Anyway, you can choose how you want to live your life. Itâs possible to enjoy it, and there are an awful lot of things to enjoy. (I donât actually consider myself an optimist either, because I know things are going to go very wrong sometimes. Iâm a realist, who is determined to make the best of any situation I find myself in.)
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I think everybody considers themself a realist. It is others that classify them as optimists or pessimists in comparison to themselves.
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Nope.
An optimist recognizes the disappointments or failures and lets them roll off their back, while they move on to the next attempt to improve it or another opportunity.
A pessimist looks at something that turned out well and is still dismayed it did not turn out better, but will not make another attempt at improvement because they are not optimistic about it.
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Correct. I look at Optimism & Pessimism being like Systolic and Diastolic blood pressure. Diastolic is what really kills you (although most people focus on Systolic) - itâs the baseline always there grind. Likewise Pessimism colors your life where Optimism affects points in time or waves of happiness.
I used to use the âIâm a pessimist so oftentimes Iâm pleasantly surprised and never disappointedâ line until I realized I was just borrowing disappointment and lived my life in a generally unhappy state. Optimists spend much of their life happy punctuated by periods of disappointment. Pessimists spend much of their life with an unhappy view of life punctuated by periods of elation. Iâd argue that for most of us the times optimists are disappointed are fewer than the times pessimists are surprised and so optimists spend most of their time appropriately happy and pessimists spend most of it preparing for a worst case that doesnât occur. Optimists thus spend less time in a negative state than Pessimists who spend most of their lives in a negative zone despite most occurrences being positive (since occurrences of things being planned for are sporadic in nature regardless of your viewpoint).
Most of the negative things I can foresee and try to forestall wonât happen. I canât tell which might so I have to prepare for them all and that is psychically draining. Since they donât happen anyway, most of my prep is wasted energy. Once I figured that out I became much happier.
I try to no longer associate with pessimists.
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I would say âoccasionallyâ disappointed - or âoccasionallyâ happy. They only differ in the expectation.
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