COLOR ME HAPPY . . . ANYWAY
I heard on the news this morning that a study’s been done and if you’re an optimist it’s because the frontal lobe in your brain is malfunctioning. Have you ever heard such utter nonsense?
Look, life’s tough. Nobody reaches puberty much less adulthood without enduring a broken heart, emotions that run the breadth of the stratosphere, and a couple head-‐on collisions with brick walls. That’s called life and growing up. Not brain malfunction. 
Optimism is a choice. The way I’ve always looked at it is that the day is coming anyway. It’s going to unfold anyway. Now it can unfold with me having a good attitude, making the most I can make of the day, or it can unfold with me having a bad attitude, wasting the chance to make anything good of the day because I’m tied up griping about it, being depressed about it, or being snagged in the pit of despair. Either way, the day will unfold.
The griping, depressed, pit of despair doesn’t sound at all appealing so I’m not going there. Period. I choose to use my functioning-‐fine brain and see the glass as half full. It’s a choice. A choice I make. Fair, since I live it.
I didn’t just get this attitude; I’ve had it as long as I can remember. It’s probably a pretty good thing because life sure throws us a lot of opportunities to make lemonade, now doesn’t it? I got lucky. I happen to love lemonade.
So I was having not a single glass but a pitcher full, and this truth about life settled in. It’s a choice. That’s what settled in. I was contemplating my next writing project and deciding what path I wanted to take. At a crossroads, so to speak. Anyway, that kept going through my mind. The choice. And then reaching for a fresh glass of lemonade, a thought struck me: What if you didn’t seem to have a choice?
Ooh, I didn’t much like that. It shot holes in my theory. Made leaky my façade that I at least had a little control of my life. No one likes those kinds of theories becoming sieves right before their eyes—and yet I couldn’t shove the thought away. What if I didn’t have a choice? Mmm, couldn’t fight it. I was intrigued.
So what happens? Say you are pretty banged up from life battles and you’re chugging lemonade by the barrel. Say you’ve looked at the problems and now you’re focusing on the solutions only there are none. You’ve been robbed. Your choice is MIA—and you’re stuck. I don’t mean figuratively. I mean literally. What do you do now?
That’s the situation that led to the Seascape novels
Led to Beyond the Misty Shore, specifically.
Being stuck doesn’t exactly inspire you to be in the most receptive frame of mind. Sunshine is arrogant when you’re grieving, right? But isn’t it true that the worst possible time is always when important things happen?
It has been in my life, and it is in T.J.’s too. He’s the guy stuck in Beyond the Misty Shore. Toss in a woman who loves to hate him, and the wise Seascape innkeeper (who seems to know everything but won’t just tell anyone anything because “some things are best learned firsthand”), a colorful cast and Maine cliffs and a little otherworldly intervention, and, well, T.J. has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he? 
Don’t feel too bad for him. We’ve been there. And, you know, sometimes when we’re broken, we have to really hurt to ever get beyond the pain. We have to figure out that we can heal before we do heal. Eventually, we get it. And when we do, magic happens. We no longer just survive. We truly live.
Gee, I’m misting up here. I think I’ll pack a bag and go visit Seascape Inn again . . . just as soon as I finish this glass of lemonade.
Blessings,
Vicki
Vicki Hinze
www.facebook.com/vicki.hinze.author
P.S. The Seascape novels are general market novels I wrote under the pen name Victoria Barrett. What a joy it is to have Beyond the Misty Shore out now under my own. Color me happy!
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