Strangely optimistic

The potential donor flaked on the meeting and, now, off our list. Our car broke down, will take $700 to fix and the part won't arrive until Tuesday or Wednesday. We need to pay $650 of the several thousand in property taxes we owe in two weeks and it is taking months to set up escrow for this with our mortgage managing company.

And yet I feel strangely hopeful and optimistic.

This is why:

Monkey makes enough money now that, with some tightening of the budget and paying minimums on some bills, we can pay for the car fix and the "get off our back" amount of our property tax. We will then have a month more to get our mortgage company to finish setting up the escrow so the rest of the taxes will get taken care of. We can then pay off the rest of the taxes slowly over time.

We live in Portland, Oregon so going without a car for awhile is not too problematic. We have a great transit system here and I like the relaxed pace of bus transit. Plus, the weather is so nice right now we are walking a lot more anyway.

We have another donor on the list and he is very communicative. We are meeting him on Tuesday. He has been very engaged and proactive. I feel hopeful about him.

It feels strange to feel optimistic. I'm usually quite pessimistic. A week like this would usually have me completely freaked out and convinced that our world was about to fall apart. It is true that some of that was my depression/anxiety that was not being treated properly but some of it was just how I tended to look at the world. I've been trying to change my thinking patterns to be more optimistic. Hmmm...maybe it is working!