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Begrudging

begrudging
Pieter van der Borcht:
Christus in het huis van Martha en Maria
[Christ in the house of Martha and Mary]
(1555-1608)


"Success brings no wisdom."


Begrudging seems the least likely side effect of Success, yet billionaires everywhere seem to have become full-time disgruntled social commentators. I would have thought that a billion bought a certain sustainable level of satisfaction, but I would have apparently been wrong and not a little wrong. Indeed, the very rich and (if only by implication, then) the very Successful seem to have been grievously wounded on their way up through the ranks. Not even those homes located in fabulous places or their super yachts or private airliners serve to salve those festering wounds, which appear to have become incapable of ever healing. Some spend lavishly churning up the rabble, funding propaganda campaigns and think tanks so well endowed that they never have to resort to actually thinking. Begrudging might seem beneath them, but it turns out to be their purpose instead.

Why, I wonder, do so many of the uber-successful consider themselves radical conservatives?

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Levitating

levitating
Lucian and Mary Brown:
Untitled [child floating in water] (c. 1950)


" … and it's "just" a feeling."


The Successful seem subject to overall less gravity weighing down their lives. They seem to Levitate above many of the most common human concerns. While I'm almost certain they are subjected to precisely the same gravitational forces the rest of us carry, those forces seem to affect the Successful differently. They seem less a burden, less encumbering as if they possessed their gravity rather than gravity possessing—owning—them. The unsuccessful seem like some onerous forces owned them, invisible yet seemingly inescapable. Maybe just an attitude distinguishes one from the other. If so, that difference sure seems to make a huge difference. They've always insisted that success breeds success, but it does more than that. It's like Success bestows a higher rate of return. The Successful seem to earn more than their more disappointed counterparts for the same amount of effort. Life does not seem to get them in the same way it gets others.

The Successful seem to age more slowly.

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-itating

-itating
Torii Kiyonobu II:
A Priest Sweeping in the Snow (1731)


" … sweeping that floor that never needed sweeping."


If you or I were to run off to a monastery to seek enlightenment, upon arrival, the Master would undoubtedly assign us some seemingly menial task and solemnly declare that work our chief responsibility. Basically, these assignments usually amount to sweeping floors that apparently do not need sweeping. If we find ourselves bored and go back to the Master seeking some more challenging assignment, our request would most certainly be rebuffed. Instead, we would be told to stick to the given job. Eventually, we might discover the more profound significance of our job that does not need doing, that we were not so much sweeping some floor that didn't need sweeping, but we were -itating instead, in this instance, med-itating.

Whether iterated sweeping floors that don't need sweeping necessarily leads to enlightenment isn't for me to say.

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Chimera

chimera
Gustave Moreau: The Chimera (1867)


" … just wait a minute and see what's served up next."


I suspect that the subject of any inquiry might eventually come to lose its initial identity. What began almost pristine in its innate separateness eventually faded into a seemingly self-sameness with its surroundings, to the point that it might have just disappeared. What was once such a specialized focus evolved to involve pretty much everything else. Try though he might, the investigator would find himself unable to segregate his inquiry into ever sharper foci, for the more he'd come to know his subject, the more it might well seem universal. Success, for instance, my focus these past two months, has expanded far beyond what I initially presumed might be its reasonable territory. I'm coming to believe that I could consider anything—any idea, any object, any emotion—in the light of Success and find that idea, object, or feeling, somehow another integral part of it. This inquisitor's moved to wonder if this effect amounts to enlightenment because it seems quite the opposite. Is endarkenment even a term?

The naive separation into individual pieces seems a reasonable enough starting point.

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DeepMystery

deepmystery
Gustave Moreau: Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra
(1875/76)


"Success often seems a stranger to me."


I hold many things to be DeepMysteries to the point that I, like everybody, believe myself unique—and not in any particularly good way. My DeepMysteries prevent me from engaging with this world as I imagine that I might, had I proven myself capable of resolving these DeepMysteries. These irresolutions do not really affect significant situations, just minor ones, making them even more insidious in most ways. I’m often stymied by some innocuous door handle or, even more often, by packaging. I cannot get to the product inside, thanks to the paranoid-level security system wrapped around the thing, which sits there so innocently within its perfectly transparent yet utterly impenetrable outer shell. I usually call for The Muse to help since such things only very rarely stymie her. She seems to be able to quickly, even preconsciously, slip through barriers I cannot penetrate under any condition.

I purchased an industrial-sized package of dishwashing detergent this week.

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Ex-Success

ex-success
Peter James Studio: Untitled
[man posing with "success" poster] (1952)


"Success only exists in past tenses …"


How long might a Success last? Some seem genuinely eternal, while others quickly evaporate. We celebrate some Successes forever. Christmas, the celebration of light Succeeding over darkness, comes to mind. When the home team wins the pennant, it seems in that minute as if every fan in those stands has experienced something genuinely eternal, yet two short seasons later, those once heroes have become a gang of bums again, spoken of derisively by the delicatessen counterman. Most Success seems alarmingly fleeting, however peaky the initial experience. Repeat the story enough times, and even the hero would really rather forget that journey. After a point, it turns into nostalgia which no amount of retelling could ever reincarnate.

I carry my standard packet of Success stories.

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Fuccess

fuccess
Franz von Stuck: Wounded Amazon (1905)


"I'll never erase those debts my Fuccesses inflicted …"


I speak today of Success that feels like failure, the advancing through terrifying turbulence, the wounding of the enthusiastic optimist. We've all been through this, where the cost of advancement hardly seems worth the effort, though we convince ourselves that it probably will be, eventually, even if it doesn't feel worth it that day. Success can be a terrible taskmaster, demanding much more than we would have willingly invested when we started, but often no more than we'd enthusiastically part with under coercion, as necessary to turn off the punishment or nudge us across some promising finish line. We imagine the expense worth it, though validation of that presumption usually has to come later. We might always carry the scar of that Success, for that wound might have made all the difference, a debt carried forward, a down payment never actually repaid. Sometimes Success changes more than one's fortune.

One might learn to approach each opportunity warily as if Success features teeth and claws once it has wounded.

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Method

method
Albrecht Dürer: Tekenaar tekent een luit
[Draftsman Draws A Lute]
(1525)


" … perhaps they're necessary, …"


Method might be necessary but never sufficient. The baker needs much more than a recipe to Succeed. So does everybody, yet the trainers invariably start by sharing recipes. They possess a "methodology,” and they promote it just as if it could contain baking's Gestalt, its practice. I suppose that teachers have to start somewhere, and wherever they begin just must prove inadequate to describe the complexities of the practice. Still, even the canny apprentice tends to imprint upon the recipe, their earliest introduction, as somehow emblematic of their practice, when it's just at best necessary but always, always, always inadequate, just like any entrance isn't the contents.

The recipes for Success seem numerous.

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Stinginess

stinginess
Juste de Juste: Pyramid of Five Men (c. 1543)


"Those who share the most toys, never really die."


Stinginess seems to have always been one of the more reliable indicators of Success. The Successful seem to become Scrooges while the more humbled remain generous Jacob Marleys. This apparent paradox, where those most able to afford, dedicate themselves to hoarding rather than sharing, has become the very foundation of modern economics, where, even more than in ancient and even antebellum times, wealth flows upward toward those least in need of it and away from those most struggling to supply it. The whole system seems some combination of heartless and needless, unnecessary, one of those anomalies we should have collectively figured out how to resolve, but we have not. Instead, we seem to be sliding even further from resolution.

I've never understood why any sentient employer would fight their employees forming a union.

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Impostoring

impostoring
Suzuki Harunobu: The Face in the Mirror (1766)


"… must be merely hollow inside."


It would surprise nobody to learn that virtually everybody engages in Impostoring, though there seem to be varying grades of individual mastery. Some practitioners work like ventriloquists, never moving lips or larynx, while others perform like the four-year-old in the family production, exhibiting much more enthusiasm than talent. Fifty years ago, this notion that even the apparently very Successful experience abiding senses of inadequacy was still a closely-held secret. It might have been a prominent presence in even the most Successful's lives, but this had not yet been discovered and named. The pair that discovered and named this condition referred to it not as a syndrome, as it has become popularly known, but as a less dramatic phenomenon. In the years since this eighth sense has taken as prominent a placement as has competence in the skill set of the genuinely Successful. One can hardly Succeed these days without, at some level formally faking the skill.

When I finished my big book, I remarked that it would forever stand as testament to what a sincere lack of faith in my ability can accomplish, for I never once had a sense when creating it that I was crafting anything extraordinary.

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Satiability

Satiability
Honoré Victorin Daumier:
“- Mr. Alfred Cabassol! You are the only one in the class who succeeded
to get through the entire week without blowing your nose into your sleeve.
Please stand to receive this prize of honour for cleanliness,”
plate 6 from Professeurs Et Moutards
(1846)


" … moving forward, if not necessarily ahead."


Given the human tendency toward dissatisfaction, I suspect that the average Satiability of the typical Success seeker might be measured in minuscule quantities, hours and days rather than months and years, but I could be wrong. I know, or think I know, that when pursuing Success, I tend to get very single-minded, as if that objective was the whole of my existence and the satisfaction I'll experience will approach infinite. After, and often even just after achieving it, I feel more of an "Oh, Is That All?" sort of sensation before going back into trolling for yet another infinite-seeming satisfaction, which will, of course, fall short of expectation once delivered. Around and around and around, I go. You might go around like this, too.

Some Success seems more sticky.

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EmergenceScenes

emergencescene
Rodolphe Bresdin: Biblical Scenes (Not Dated)


" … Successfully seeming so damned ordinary."


What if a writer didn't start with his story's end in mind? What if he considered his art, his calling, to be different from transcription of a cleverly pre-developed plot? What if he never gave plot a single thought but instead considered conveying plot to be an emergent property rather than an underlying purpose of his work? What might result, aside from said writer being rudely thrown out of the fraternity? The result might produce EmergenceScenes, glimpses of what might easily be mistaken for deliberate plot were they not so divergent. After considerable consideration, they might sum to the same thing to produce a certain coherence not evident while the emergence was busy unfolding. Rather than starting with his ending in mind, the creator of EmergentScenes begins with the intention of discovering what might later be mistaken for a plot line. He begins by simply starting with intention.

In our real world, in our lived lives, no clever plotlines exist.

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Spot

spot
Gordon W. Gahan: Star's Daughter (Fourth of eleven):
Her favorite spot for studying scripts is the big window sill in her Manhattan apartment. (1964-65)


"My internal state determines my Success …"


I have a Spot, a place where I feel emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, and physically balanced and secure. I do not continuously inhabit this place but seem to be trending toward inhabiting it instead. Some days, I find myself smack dap in the center of it, while on others, I cannot seem to find even its slightest edge. When I stand near the center of this Spot, I feel remarkably powerful and comfortable "in my skin," as the old saying goes. Though not always profoundly, I feel the absence when I’m away from it. I understand I’m more likely to do something short-sighted or stupid when absent. I'm divorced from my very best when I lose my Spot. Losing it serves as grounds for serious searching, and often in vain, for I usually prove inept when I've lost my Spot.

My Successes seem strongly correlated with my inhabiting my Spot.

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CruelOptimism

crueloptimism
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon:
Le Cruel rit des pleurs qu'il fait verser
[The Cruel One Laughs at the Tears Which It Causes To Be Shed]
(1793)

" …
getting better and better!"


Novelist and radio personality Garrison Keillor described his fictional Minnesota town of Lake Woebegone as "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Nobody needs me to tell them that in no population do all the members measure above average for anything. We have all been schooled in proper comportment, at least to the extent that we understand that a passing question like, "How are you?" must be responded to in the positive: "Fine, thanks. You?" Our response might qualify as pure fiction, but then so was the question, for it was a mere acknowledgment of presence and never intended to encourage disclosure. Societies depend upon such understandings.

Last night I began reading a book that I'm sure I will never finish.

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Style

style
Dominicus Custos:
A Grotesque Head with a Helmet in the Style of Arcimboldo (1594)


" … a nearly sacred responsibility to judge my own behavior …"


I yesterday experienced an existential crisis. I encountered another dark side of Success, the idea that it might be all about competing. I felt as though I'd fallen into an inescapable pit, like I'd made a poor, perhaps even hasty, choice when selecting Success as my focus for a series. As with any existential crisis, I was blinded by insight and could not see beyond it. I scratched a barely legible note on my cell wall and moved on into my day, feeling supremely disappointed in myself. I sank into a bout of self-pity from which I figure I might one day recover. My realization shook me to my core. My inquiry into Success had produced an overwhelming feeling of failure, for I had not intended and never wanted to cast myself as a competitor. I consider competition a serious illness best treated by refusing to engage. I'd imagined that Success might be managed as something other than competition. I still believe this must be possible.

I could take each of the seven deadly sins and expose each as a primary means for achieving Success.

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Complitition

complitition
Édouard Manet:
Beggar with a Duffle Coat [Philosopher] (1865/67)


" … might be an improvement."


I tried to imagine Success as something other than a result of some kind of competition. I failed.

I tried to imagine Success as something independent from winning or losing.

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T/MakingStock

t_makingstock
Berthe Morisot: Woman at Her Toilette (1875/80)


"Progress never was my most important product."


Checking progress has always been the great enemy of progress, for those focused upon making progress can barely bear to slow down, let alone stop, to TakeStock. My old friend Norm Kerth wrote a definitive book about this dilemma, reframing the stock-taking into more of a stock-making, transforming the drudge into celebration, but the connotation was never completely removed. TakingStock does not seem like a productive activity, and to those focused on making progress, it's probably always destined to seem like a relative waste of time. It might mostly be a waste of time.

About every month, I finally get fed up with the lack of space in my freezer and clean out the sucker.

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Fear

fear1
Walter Gramatté: Die Grosse Angst [The Great Fear] (1918)


I Fear Success. I suppose I am not alone in my feelings toward it, even though anyone might argue that Fear hardly qualifies as a rational response to the threat of Success. (Yea, Success seems threatening to me!) Like all feelings, fear was never supposed to follow any rational ideal. Like all emotions, it visits on its own schedule, for its own mysterious reasons, and remains fundamentally non-rational. My job seems to be to figure out how to cope with Fear's appearances.

Success seems as though it might well complicate more than improve.

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AmplifiedReflective

aplifiedreflective
Arnold Böcklin: In the Sea (1883)


"Successful beneficiaries …"


Years ago, The Muse returned from a workshop with a fresh term. I sincerely appreciate The Muse's willingness to subject herself to workshops since that urge helps me acquire fresh perspectives I'd never willingly seek by signing up for a workshop for myself. I gain much vicariously that I steadfastly refuse to receive the old-fashioned way. I used to teach workshops, but I can't imagine a situation where I would agree to submit to one myself. I correctly fear all forms of education, and not only because I tend to test poorly, though I do tend to test very poorly, a condition that a lifetime of training has failed to improve. Altogether too much emphasis exists to prove that students were paying attention and that they've managed to retain what might have never stuck. The purpose of education was never validation, but try telling that to a system trying to justify its existence.

The term The Muse dragged home was AmplifiedReflective, which I instantly recognized as perfectly formed.

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Nuthin

nuthin
Pieter Symonsz Potter: Vanitas Still Life (1646)


"Nuthin' might serve as a perfectly satisfactory purpose …"


Of all that anyone might Successfully achieve, Nuthin' ranks near the top of the Most Difficult List. The difficulty seems to be the doing. Nuthin' requires nothing, and plenty of it, generously spread over time, and something about time naturally repels Nuthin' like oil on water. A few minutes into the effort, the monkey mind takes over and starts casting thoughts out into the ether, where they try to take root. Even that simple, nearly non-action amounts to something, the opposite of the intended Nuthin’. Even if the monkey mind doesn't derail the initiative, boredom might doom the effort by driving the incumbent into something, however well-intended the effort at accomplishing Nuthin'. It's hard work, perhaps the hardest.

The Muse continues healing from her throat cancer, the primary treatment for which she finished three months ago.

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Proximity

proximity
Albrecht Dürer:
The Prodigal Son Amid the Swine (c. 1496)


" … a flow wherein the sense seems to come and go …"


They insist that misery loves company. It might be that every state aches for its similars such that any emotion promotes more of itself; any perspective creates the context for self-preservation and replication. Success seems to crave company, too. Perhaps the best preparation for any Success might come from merely placing one's self in close Proximity to some Success, be that person, place, or thing. Hang out with Successful people, and I might find myself infected with something akin to Success germs, so I might have little choice about whether to feel Successful. It "just" happens. Hang out in a place known as a Success and feel how deep an influence that place seems to exert. Our Successful remodel rendered our modest villa into a relative palace. We live like royalty as a result.

This simple principle justifies a certain discernment and careful judgment when choosing anything.

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SuperBorsolino

superborsolino
Gordon W. Gahan:
Untitled [man in white shirt and fedora] (1965-1968)


" … clearly styling."


Success seems to attract symbols of its presence, none more prominent, I suspect, than wardrobe. We 'dress for success,' as if our manner of dress would quite reasonably attract Success to us, and I suppose that this practice even works, after a fashion. I know I subscribed to 'dress for success' magical thinking during my tenure at The Insurance Company. I'd carefully shop the sale racks at the "better" haberdashers and spend every Sunday evening ironing my week's shirts, heavy on the starch. I arrived at the office each morning in costume and ready to perform the role of an up-and-comer, poised to impress myself, if nobody else. And I suppose those strange attractors worked, more or less, for my fortunes steadily rose there, and that Success could not possibly have been related to any particular talent I possessed. I might as well blame that Success on the vests.

Others possess lucky underpants, socks, and tee shirts; some even carry a "lucky" rabbit's foot on their keychain.

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Askemption

askemption
Isoda Koryusai:
Girl Playing a Prank on a Young Man who is Napping (c. 1769)


"It must have just happened just because."


I do not consider myself incurious, yet I frequently squelch one line of inquiry. I might, with genuine curiosity, ask the usual who?, what?, and when? before squelching on the why?. I do this because I long ago decided that why? serves severely limited utility and mostly fails to rise up to within the range of a necessary question and worse, why? most often proves to be an absolute barrier to resolution. In those rare instances where my personal motivation might come into question and where I'm the one expected to perform the answering, why? seems an entirely unremarkable question, but these conditions rarely reign. More often, the situation involves another's presumed motivation coming into question, or worse, a chain of presumed motivations shared between a string of actors, none of whom seem available for cross-examination. Then, I can only deepen the mystery by asking why? questions. Insisting upon answers from an apparently indifferent universe seems as though it could only ever make matters worse. I try to remember to cease and desist then and grant myself an Askemption.

Success often stands beyond closure.

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Approval

approval
Gabriël Metsu: The Herring-Seller (c. 1661 - 62)


" … rendering the whole system suicidally cynical."


By the end of his second year in office, President Joe Biden could tout one of the most successful administrations in the history of his country. On nearly every scale, he had prevailed in fixing, improving, resolving, and minimizing serious problems and longer-term inequities. Moreover, despite a cruelly opposing Senate majority, he prevailed, probably due to his superior understanding of how his government worked and in no small part due to the utter ineptness of his predecessor, who, in stark contrast with Biden's administration, produced a succession of absolute disasters. Still, Biden's Approval rating hovered around forty percent.

The previous incumbent's Approval had ranged as low as the low twenties.

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Austerity

austerity
Edgar Degas: Breakfast after the Bath (1895/98)


" … only investing in the future could move us there."


Our siblings in Great Britain suffer from decades of foolish leadership, effects we've barely sidestepped ourselves. After Reagan's disastrous economic strategies failed, along with his ally Margaret Thatcher's, a succession of Repuglican politicians continued hammering the same senseless drumbeat, warning of dire consequences for our children and our grandchildren should we not invoke deep spending cuts and agree to subject ourselves to an indefinite period of Austerity. They insisted that we could starve our way to prosperity, an absurd yet strangely popular strategy, albeit one that steadfastly ignored overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We were never in great danger of smothering ourselves with our spending. Quite the opposite! After forty years of dire warnings, our debt service remains a most modest, just under two percent of GDP, the envy of pretty much everybody else in the world.

The chorus continues in even greater earnestness.

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Edgercating

edgercating
Lucian and Mary Brown: Untitled
[children in classroom looking at globe]
(circa 1950)


"I still haunt my own periphery …"


I suspect that we all received a somewhat different than a standard education. I certainly did. Rather than advance directly to college after high school, passing Go and collecting the obligatory two hundred dollars, I entered a kind of Limbo, where for a year or so, I was neither here nor anywhere, really. I enrolled in the local community college, which I called the high school with ashtrays, and set about trying to avoid getting drafted. I never really suspected it at the time, but I was receiving an exquisite education, albeit from around the edges. I would receive no advanced degree in observational methodologies, just one Hell of a lot of practice in the field. I might not have been formally enrolled in one of the finest universities, but I was nonetheless receiving the highest quality instruction, personally curating content as well as instructors.

Within a year, I'd followed the woman who would later become my first wife back to her shared apartment in Seattle's U District, for she was formally enrolled in a genuine University.

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BlowingItUp

blowingitup
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen: Truth and the Two Soldiers (1891)


"Blowing It Up Better."


I consider it perfectly normal to start off in the wrong direction. We are after all, humans, and humans have always excelled at heading off in some wrong direction, often for the very best of reasons. Anyone, at any time, remains perfectly capable of making just such a mistake. The only question might be how long it will take before one notices and takes corrective action. Any of an array of familiar responses might emerge whenever a human finally notices their error. (A different set appears when we notice someone else in error.) Some will attempt corrective action, just as if the fix should not require any significant course correction. However, if one's headed in the wrong direction, it might require anything up to and including a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree deflection. I usually manage a fix in more like a dozen similarly wrong-headed attempts to fix.

The issue at hand rarely seems to be a question of intent.

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Anticipations

anticipations
Edouard Manet: Le ballon [The Balloon] 1862


"Who's to say my Anticipations don't create my future?"


Success must surely be at least ninety percent Anticipations. We more often see what we believe than believe what we see. We might be incapable of moving cleanly into any future, each future first manifesting in Anticipations of what might be seen. It might be most common for one to anticipate worse rather than better. I know I usually first feel a foreboding when considering what's coming. That seems to be my default setting. It requires great concentration for me to warmly anticipate any future. I'm more apt to consider its potential shortcomings than in any way expect blessings. I suppose that I might most often manifest something worse than I would have otherwise conjured had I merely anticipated better.

Leading up to a meeting I've been invited to facilitate, I anticipate disaster.

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