This is pretty much how I have been feeling lately. When this popped up on my social media I realised that many others feel the same, it wasn’t my mindset, I was not alone.

There is something about safety in numbers!

I thought my feeling was partly due to my age, it made me wonder if as you get older your bullshit cup just gets full and you become intolerant of it. But perhaps not, perhaps it is a shift in energy generally on the planet.

I don’t need to highlight all the shit going on in the world. It’s already there, in your face. To mitigate some of it I have decided that I am going to mute the TV whenever he with the ginger guinea pig for hair starts talking bullshit in the doorway of a plane. (Apologies to all guinea pigs.) Small things. But when I see that arsehole’s mouth moving, but no sound can be heard, there is something about that image that makes me smile.

One of the other things I am trying do is mitigate a negative with a positive: The snow and ice make getting around difficult, but look at how beautiful it looks.

Or I have no work but it means I get to spend time with the girlies, and RD and we have more time at weekends to just chill, because I am getting all the chores done.

Even being as ill as I was, has a positive: I have lost quite a bit of weight, and our lifestyle has changed for the better. It gave us the shake up we needed.

Then the past week I thought that finally some media was starting to understand just how pissed off people are; and, even more importantly, had decided to try and mitigate it.

Recently the BBC breakfast show has been showing a ‘Good News’ story at about 6.30am every day. Originally it was generated as part if the festivities: happy stories. But so many people contacted them to say how it was helping them face the day, uplifting them, they carried them into the new year.

The story could be about volunteering groups, and how they have offered each other comfort and solace in difficult times. Or the elderly gentleman who made wooden toys for children who otherwise would not have received Christmas gifts. Particularly poignant because his wife had died in the last year, and they used to do it together. Most would have given up, but he carried on, for her memory, and because it gave him solace. Then there was the school that played dance music every morning and encouraged the pupils, and their parents, to dance into the day. So many parents said how it had uplifted them.

The stories were about everyday people, just giving each other a lifebelt in this difficult world.

Now given that I am now prone to general misanthropy (I don’t hate, that’s too strong a word, perhaps despair is a better word to describe my misanthropic state of mind.) I found these stories uplifting. They gave me hope.

So today I turned on the TV and waited for my burst of feel-good. But 6.30am came and went and there was no good news story. They had run out of good news stories! I then remembered they had asked for more stories after yesterday’s story, but I had not realised it was because they had literally run out! Does that say something of today’s world?

So instead of feeling up-lifted, today I was feeling despondent.

But….as I write this the positive is….at least the BBC has recognised the general malaise, and is trying to uplift people.

It inspired me to join a volunteering group!

Moisy