My post yesterday was a glimpse into the "Pushy Broad That Was."  A snapshot of the old glass half-full, never say die, fuck the odds and forge ahead, opinionated woman who still believed that good triumphs over evil, that what goes around comes around if you wait long enough and that it ain't over till the fat lady sings. This is your brain on HOPE.

It felt good - good and familiar - to pound out that post yesterday and to engage in intelligent discussion with many of you about the ins-and-outs of what is and what could be.  I felt energized and, dare I say it, just a little hopeful. More hopeful than I've felt in years.

We are all a product of the sum total of our life experiences. My opinion (of which I am never in short supply) is that we make a choice based on said experiences. We either rise above them or we anchor ourselves to them and wallow in the mire. Our approach to life is governed by one or the other of those two choices. I've never been one to accept the status quo. Give me an insurmountable problem and I will set to work figuring out a way through it, around it or over it. It's safe to say that I've been on a "mission from God" (to quote the Blues Brothers) to find justice in an unjust world from the time I was a little girl growing up in a seriously dysfunctional family. Yadda, yadda - everyone has their story to tell. 

Flash forward to 2005. I was working twelve-hour days in the corporate world, making damn good money, fighting to make myself smaller when I came home from slaying corporate giants so that my totally insecure husband wouldn't feel threatened - again, yadda, yadda - everyone has their story.

I believed in my government. I made my choices in that regard and I felt good about them. Then, through a series of events that were completely out of my control, I was afforded a closeup view of the underbelly of the governmental entities of this greatest country in the world. I crashed and burned and all of my Pollyanna-ish ideals died in the fire. My country, my elected officials, my belief system failed me. It was ugly. Yadda, yadda -  another day, another story.

I walked away from all of it - corporate America, my faith in a hopelessly flawed system, the good-wife mentality - ALL. OF. IT. I shut down, I stopped believing, I stopped caring, I stopped hoping. I kept my head down and plodded along. 

Over time, I chanced a brief glimpse at the world around me. I feigned disinterest, but the wheels started to turn. Damn hope springs eternal. More time passed, more deep wounds scarred over. I thought, What the hell, and I pulled my head out of the sand. Eventually that brought me to Wednesday night and President Obama's speech, and ultimately to my  glass half-full, never say die, fuck the odds and forge ahead,  good triumphs over evil, what goes around comes around if you wait long enough, it ain't over till the fat lady sings diatribe of yesterday's blog. 

Here we go again. This is your brain on hope. I will attempt to exercise more caution this time around; and I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that I'll ever throw in one-hundred percent again. BUT... yadda, yadda - time for another story.