Still, there is much to learn.

For once, the future does not seem to be bleak.

I know the future is far away and I try not to mind.

It is there, to be taken and felt when the time is right but I cannot help the nagging feeling within my cortex that it might be a mediocre gift than a grand luxury.

I think, therefore I worry.

The colorful mornings, warm afternoons and the chilly sunsets have no bearing on my life these days except for the food intake timings. There is no longer joy in little things anymore, the distance between joy and sorrow is widening and is stretching out so fast, that even if I ran like the legendary Usain Bolt, I wouldn't be able to clamber onto the tip of the pedestral of joy.

It is this monotonous lifestyle that most people who think of retiring fear. I have made a living out of this. There is nothing of interest for me with the resources I possess. Prerequisite for newer things, I do not possess. Caught in the web of stagnation, what can one do to liberate himself from the sticky threads of inaction?

I have a temporary fix, and its keeping me alive.

A few card games with my pals. It refreshes me to face another day, another tirade regarding how the holidays must be well spent.

Sigh.

A positive thinker finds every X to be a + and hence I must find a respite from this drone existence.

The ability to go along this meandering routine of a few highs and lotsa lows, assures me that the future will not be bleak.

How?

Sherlock Holmes has told us all "If you've eliminated all other possibilities whatever remains, however impropable must be the truth."

I've eliminated the worst care scenarios which I might face and selected this one as the worst that I can possibly go through. And the funny part is, If I can get through this, the future whatever it might have, can offer me nothing that will cause me to flinch in agony.

It won't be bleak after all, it'll be a lesser evil than the idling of the human brain while time flies by like an arctic tern, hither and thither throughout the world.

The self is intrepid now. The future won't be bleak after all. *smile*