I Found Something Funnier than 24... in Introduction

Every time I’ve heard someone mention they have a “spirit animal” (the animal in which they feel they most relate), it’s usually a sloth. Even though I’m kinda lazy myself at times, I work hard and often, so I can’t say that it would be mine. I’d also like to mention that I don’t want to be like everyone else, but I have a theory on the quest for “originality”, too: just about everyone wants to be different/an original, so if everyone is, that defeats the entire goal, doesn’t it?

Digression: off.

I’ve come to the conclusion that even though I also strongly relate to my pug, who enjoys eating, attention, and laying around quite a bit, my spirit animal is an ostrich. What are ostriches best known to do? Yes: burying their heads in the sand. That is soooo me.

Elaboration: on.

I recently canceled my subscription to our local newspaper, because it was so wrought with the darker side of the news with very little focus on the positive. Plastered on the front page would be crashes, negative politics, deaths, and other gloom-and-doom stories. Somewhere around page 9, deeply hidden under the murk of anguish, there would be a tiny cheerful article about, say, a small business owner in our area who would donate free lunches to less fortunate children during the summer months. So, in order to have my morning coffee and maintain a cheerful outlook for my day, I had to stop reading it.

Same with the televised news, but I suppose that needs little explanation outside of the fact that the broadcast not only feeds my eyes with despair but my ears as well. So, I tune in as little as possible. Of course, I’m no Pollyanna, and I know that with knowledge comes power (and begets great responsibility, according to the late, great Uncle Ben), so I do still try to educate myself on world events when necessary, but it’s not good for my particular well-being to be on a steady diet of pessimism. Although I won’t go as far as saying I am an empath, just hearing a horrible story about animal abuse can cast a dark cloud over my entire day.

Recently, a friend of mine was telling me about a movie on Netflix that I just “had to watch”, citing the “heartbreaking story” that it told, and urged me to tune in, stating that she “cried like a baby”.

Now, why in the HELL would I sign up for that?! I find it funny, actually genuinely funny, that some people hear that and say, “That sounds great; I will definitely have to check it out” because there are people who do!

I am not one of them.

I guess we all have our friends whose spirit animals are Eeyore, and some are whatever-is-in-between, but I just want to be silly/happy/maybe sometimes oblivious/optimistic. Kind of like an ostrich/pug mutation, maybe sprinkled with a little dose of Spongebob.