That is good news, and, more importantly, a great reminder for everyone who is taking some kind of medication that it is good health management to keep current on how the meds might be affecting some potentially useful part of your anatomy.  You know, like your liver.  Never know when it might come in handy.

 

Most of us have come to some sort of, hopefully, peaceful terms with our SOM.  We don't minimalize the effect it has on us, but we become more easily accomodated to our symptoms and can accept them in the larger context of our health and extended lives.  I think, hope, that we all have success with this, although it can be a real roller coaster ride for some of us.  I'm guessing that those of us who have had SOM for a long time find this easier.

 

Anyway...it's great to share this when we are aware that it is manifesting for us.

 

It's interesting that you use the half-full glass metaphor.  It's a common one, but certainly not expressed often enough.  I was in another state a few weeks ago and one of my fellow trainees (dog training, testing and enrichment in the shelter environment) was just beginning a new administrative job after having left the biz for ten years.  The week was filled to brimming with her laments about how difficult her new job at the shelter was going to be and how enept, ineffective and difficult to re-train her new employees were going to be.  After a few days there were some trainers who were ready to clobber her, but since we were all there as humane workers that seemed to be an excessive response, but just barely.  Mostly we tried to ignore her. 

 

Unfortunately, she sought me out during our break periods and I had to listen to her continue with the whole lamenting thing.  After a while I decided that she really wasn't hurting me in any way, and it actually became less annoying, and more comedic.  Especially since we have all been there and behaved in ways similar to her.  It was easy to just listen to her, allowing the words to flow over and around me, thinking gentle thoughts about her and hoping that during the times when I have behaved so boorishly that someone listening to me was able to see the nice person, that I think that I actually am, somewhere behind all the bluster, self-importance and just plain dumbness.

 

However.  On our last day of training, during our lunch break, she became really insistent that I agree with how uninformed her new employees were and how painful it was going to be for her to have to deal with them.  I remember thinking that they probably have been doing a pretty darn good job for the past couple of decades before she came along, but kept that thought to myself.  I didn't exactly snap or anything, but I did tell her how, when I had been in her position I had felt that I was on the same learning path as the new people with whom I had to work and that, no, I didn't feel that the work that we do is too difficult, that it is too demanding and that it is hopeless to expect any lasting improvement in the realm of humane treatment of animals (her words).  I shared with her what an adventure each new opportunity was for me, sharing the excitement of making the lives of animals, their people and my community just a little better and that my shelter and community cup was always, at its worst half full and at its best overflowing.  And, I don't work just with happy, little families and their pets, I work with urban issues and with a couple of correctional facilities.  While it made me feel a bit better, more positive to share all of that with her, she looked at me as though I had just dropped out of the sky, probably from another planet, one where the inhabitants were just as without a clue as her new employees.

 

And, as I was telling her all of that, and more, I knew that it was true of my relationship to the work and had been for a very, very long time.  And I remember thinking that I forget to remember that as often as I should, mostly just taking it for granted, but not affording it the gratitude it deserves.

 

So, thanks, Klarman!!!!  Here's to full cups everywhere, even it they are only half-full.    And, they don't necessarily have to be half-full of martinis, either.

 

Oh, one more thing.  All of you half-full-ers, it is still appropriate and healthful to come here and crab, complain, whine, whimper, bemoan and moan and groan your head off whenever it feels right to you.