Grim

Yesterday I received an email from a good buddy of mine asking if I was coping with the deployment alright.  The reason he asked, he said, was because some of my emails sound grim.  At first I couldn't
really understand where this was coming from.  I mean I always thought my emails were funny.  I think if I make myself laugh then other people will laugh too.  And I am seriously laughing when I write the majority of my emails.  But then I thought about some of the emails and I wondered if maybe I am grim after all.

I decided to look the word up and be precise in the determining of my grimness.  On Dictionary.com there are 5 different definitions for the words grim.

Definition 1- unrelenting, rigid. 

Hmmm.  I don't think I'm ever entirely unrelenting or rigid.  So I'm a little stubborn at times.  It's not like I don't ever budge.  I'm pretty open-minded to other situations and people's opinions even if they are completely wrong.  Rigid I am not.

Definition 2-uninviting or unnerving in aspect,
forbidding. 

 Come on, I'm a friendly guy.  Sometimes I growl at people when they try to sit next to me but
it's all in good fun until they do sit next to me and I bite them.  I don't think that's so uninviting, I'm just trying to help them out really, prevent them from getting a bite wound.  Are you guys scared of me?  Do my emails sound forbidding?  Don't you dare say they do, or else... grrrrrrr.

Definition 3-ghastly, sinister. 

Wow.  If this is what he meant by saying that I sound grim I sound pretty damn cool.  Like a super villain plotting the demise of the world.  I can't really accept a compliment like that.  My plots are much smaller in scope and usually have something to do with smuggling food out of the chow hall.

Definition 4-ferocious, savage. 

Now, I don't want to brag or anything but may say that they agree with this one.  At least I would like to think that some would agree with this.  Not in like a bad ferocious, but a good, primal, sexual kind of ferociousness.  I'm like a savage African Tiger with these big fangs and claws that can't be tamed.  Awlllright, gigadee gigadee.

Definition 5-dismal, gloomy.  Gloomy? 

Do I really sound gloomy?  I dunno.  Maybe I am gloomy sometimes, but that has nothing to do with being deployed.  No it has more to do with facing, each and every day, the fact that reality never completely lives up to my dreams.  Knowing that my "relentless" optimism is "ferociously" beat down every day and that eventually this old heart of mine will become "sinister" from all of the disappointment and in turn become an "uninviting" organ for any person to take a gander at. And that, is the "gloomy" realization that I have to face every day knowing that I'm as hopeless as can be.

Charlie, you're right.  I am grim.