I had just left an architects office after a lunch and learn. The food (bar-b-que, sweet and spicy) was well received, and the advance warning had drawn 50 interiors people. There were a ton of questions after the newly tweaked PowerPoint-set-to-pop-music slideshow had toes tapping and heads bobbing for the course of the colorful, fast-paced visual barrage. I had been asked to look at not one, but two big projects that were about to be presented to clients. The selection of the large-scale decorative glass appointments constituting a principal visual component of the plan in each had yet to be finalized. They had wanted to know if I would like to be written in as the supplier so when the jobs went out to bid, the work would likely come right to my door. Yes, it was a fine day. Between the meal, the attention and the promise of new revenue generated for the company by yours truly doing just what I like to do (telling the story of glass and how it’s kept me captivated all these years) I was feeling euphoric, and really, really, relaxed with all going so well in the world. As I sat in the car, about ready to leave the parking lot, I closed my eyes for just a moment in reflection.

The cell phone again. Another 800 number? Oh well, it’ got to be one of the credit card companies, or lease companies. Maybe it’s a utility company warning me of an interruption in service, or maybe, hopefully, it’s just a wrong number. I don’t think I have the strength to answer and find out, lest I be distracted from …. From what? Did I just fall asleep? There are so many quotes to follow up. Maybe they’ll all convert to real business. I hope all the checks that should have been here last week get here today so I can cover what I wrote on Friday. Gosh my help is in a bad mood. I wish the contractor had not been so emphatic about us gearing our Monday morning toward finishing up just so we could show up (now how long till we finish and get that big check still owed us?) only to find the sub before us hadn’t done his job so the site was not ready for us. What a crappy way to start the week.

Another 800 number. Is there no end to this? The mortgage. When will they learn I pay in arrears? I don’t have the cash flow at the start of the month because there are too many commitments for business obligations. Hope they don’t report my curt but polite style of responding to them to the credit bureau; my fico score has dropped too far from all the personal guarantees I’ve made for the company anyway. What am I going to do about all the personal loans people have made me? Everybody is hurting and wants to be paid back. I’ve never stiffed anyone. There haven’t been any commitments made for obligations that were inconsistent with our needs or how we were growing. It’s not like I’m going to declare chapter whatever and someone is there with a check already written so we can start over clean and move on. We’re no car company, that’s for sure.

Nope, definitely not too big to fail. But I won’t. What, with all this business I’ve been promised and we’ve been specified for and with what I’m quoting everyday, this is going to work out, it’s just got to. I know it will. Gosh this makes me tired. Glad I started the day at the gym. Maybe if I rest my eyes for just a second …

This pseudo sci-fi blog is patterned after the Twilight Zone episode about the sick girl who thinks she’s going to fry because the earth’s been knocked out of orbit and is headed toward the sun. She wakes from a dream to find that the earth is moving away and she’s freezing instead. The big difference between that girl and me is that neither of her realities was borne of any optimism, and both of my vignettes end on the up-beat. It is said that “he who is always waiting for things to turn up has his eyes focused on the ground.” Work with optimism. Whether you subscribe to the philosophy of Oscar Wilde, who said “The basis of optimism is sheer terror” or Lucille Ball, who said “One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself,” I’ve read and believe that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it. I’ve been a character in both vignettes, and here I am, writing to tell about it, and still smiling.