On Disappointment

I try in my life to not get my hopes up. At least, I keep telling myself that I try not to get my hopes up. The reality of the situation is such that I'm constantly getting my hopes up. I can't help it. I'm an optimist by my very nature. I've spent approximately the last decade of my life to find out how I could have developed to be an optimistic cynic. It's a character flaw. I'm working on it. I spent several years getting myself ramped up for the release of the Star Wars prequels. I'm not even going to go into how that one turned out. I got my hopes up about the first car that I purchased on my own (well, with my wife, but without my parents). I ended up with a citrus fruit on four wheels that I'm not even sure is worthy of the title "lemon." Right now I'm leaning towards "grapefruit." I tell myself year after year that the Vikings probably aren't going to do very well, but I get my hopes up (often aided by a 6-0 start) only to have my hopes dashed (sometimes aided by a 3-7 finish). I'm really trying to not get too exited this year, but it's hard with a offensive line that, on paper, looks to be dominating and a defense that has some real talent for once in a decade (or so). Honestly, I'm trying not to.

Currently, I'm trying to save up for a laptop of my very own. That way, instead of running into the basement to do stuff on the computer, I'll sitting on the couch in plain sight and being worlds away because I'm typing to you, my loyal and loving audience. All three of you. I have made the mistake of getting my heart set on one of the new Apple MacBooks even though the native operating system is completely a foreign concept to me; the hardware is probably a bit overpriced for what they give you; there have been numerous complaints about heating issues and discolorations (I mean, who wants a laptop that has spots colored on it that look like it's been smoking or that it has pit stains); and that it'll take me a very long time to save the money for one. I've somehow managed to be really looking forward to getting one so that I can brag to all of my Apple-loving friends that now I have a laptop that's different - just like all of theirs! I know that ultimately, I'll probably be disappointed in it. Something will break, or I won't be able to afford the memory upgrade that will let me run Paralells like I want, or my wife will fall in love with it and start blogging so that I never am able to spend time with the laptop that I saved so hard to be able to purchase and have to stand looking over her shoulder all of the time saying things like, "Honey, I have an article due tomorrow." It's just seemed to be the rule of my life.

Granted, there are some exceptions to this rule. Marriage, for instance has been fantastic. Though, that goes with territory of, as Matt Birk puts it, "out-kicking my coverage." Being a father has also out-stepped any of my expectations. However, I would again point out that these are the exceptions and not the rules.

"So," you might ask if we were having an actual conversation instead of you just being beaten over the head with my ranting, "what, pray tell, is the catalyst for such bemoaning of your history?" Well, tonight it was made apparent to me that I had once again allowed my hopes to be brought so high before they came crashing down with the avalanche of reality. You see, I found out that they had opened the beta of Writely. Writely is an on-line word processor that allows users to collaborate and post to their blogs and, I was hoping, should solve all of the problems and complaints that I have about the editing directly on Blogger. Since both Blogger and Writely are Google products (or, you know, purchases), they should seamlessly work both with each other and hopefully my Google calendar and email. Well, so far, I've been disappointed. When they advertise that they post to a blog, one would think that the posting would include, just perhaps, having the title of the document be the title of the post. Even though I have that box checked in my posting preferences, it didn't seem to work that way. Granted, it's all of one step to go over to Blogger and add a title field to the post, but it's one step that I shouldn't have to do. I'm lazy, but I accept that. It's another character flaw. I have yet to see how the collaboration aspects of the site work, but we'll see, and I'll probably add a comment here about it. Another beef that I have, at least for now, is the fact that the posting options only allows for the user to have one blog available. That's just silly to me since much of the blogging community has multiple sites to which they contribute. Hopefully that's something that will be rectified in the future. For now, I'll just have to continue living my life finding things to nitpick and be disappointed about in things that I've artificially built up in my own mind before doing sufficient research to determine whether I have any foundation in my line of thinking. I think I just insulted myself.