I have made several ill-advised, selfish, foolish decisions in my life, and have also had situations turn weird, catastrophically collapse, be destructive and awful, etc. I was thinking back on a lot of this wreckage recently and realized that a talent I have (and I say "talent" carefully, since it is a natural ability, not a cultivated skill) is to make the best of whatever ends up happening. I often do not land on my feet, exactly. More like I have been repeatedly knocked on my ass. But I seem to look for the best aspects of whatever is happening, naturally. I think this is a reflection of wyte male privilege, partly, for sure, because we have a lot of independence and freedom to check things out, to feel like we have access to everything, and that context makes it more likely we will go in search of better aspects of a given situation, I guess. I think it's also a reflection of my fundamentally hedonistic pagan and weirdly "optimistic" mindset/values. There's a few ways that living close to death, in the sense of knowing death is a real terminus, and becoming more accepting of that, and making the conscous choice to stick around, changes things up. Like, I seriously did not want to move to Los Angeles. It was nowhere on my geographical list. Been here, done this. I know far too much about the downsides to have had it as a top choice. But I'm loving living here again. Even during the pandemic. I think it's a weird ability. It's like a "welp, wtf universe" attitude. This is this. What's good? This is not to say that there have not also ben truly dreadful times, where it was extremely challenging to make the best of it. But, on the whole, unless I am hallucinating this morning from too much coffee, it seems like the majority of the time I had that Magician's knock for forging something useful, enjoyable, memorable, and good, out of just about everything. I feel like I could say a lot more about this tendency, but I'm burned out on the digital realm. Another time.