Resentment and Forgiveness

[Due to probable copyright issues, you will just have to imagine a big photo of "Grumpy Cat" here]
 
I can't sleep. Was awakened before two this morning, and just couldn't fall back into it, so here I am. Being a person who has always needed nine or ten hours of sleep per night, this is a first. Interesting.................
If I say anything strange, chalk it up to the lack of.

Resentment is a word with which I am becoming intimately acquainted, most likely as a natural part of the aging process. The more you experience in life, the less patience you have for anyone who hasn't yet. You also have dwindling tolerance for others in your own age bracket who are also losing patience with the world. You and your peers begin to ferment, and not in the "aged like a fine wine" way, but like vinegar. Aging gracefully is an urban legend........ We all just pickle.
I am approaching mid-century, and when I hear news stories about how much money one should have saved for retirement, I cringe to think of the $24 in my savings account. I am an artist and a musician, and a child of poor missionaries. Triple threat, financially speaking.
I use those things as an excuse for my lack of business sense, direction, and an inability to balance a checkbook. Most of the other musicians I know at least had the foresight to get a degree which qualified them for gainful employment, and although my parents never had such a thing as "disposable income", they have always met their financial obligations with dignity. I resent never having been taught how to budget my allowance as a kid, but if my folks had tried, I doubt that I would have actually paid attention ( I blame that on ADHD or Aspergers'.....Something must be misaligned in this brain of mine).  I did pay attention, however when my Mom taught me how to make a mean apple pie...I must forgive them for being too kind to me.
I resent most of my private music students, who come from well-to-do-ish families, but who don't understand the courtesy of calling before the day of their scheduled lesson to say they will not be there because of a most important basketball game. I also resent that most of them don't practice at all, but they still expect to make All-State Orchestra and will blame me if they don't. And if it weren't for the ones who do show up, I wouldn't have any grocery money.
I resent the people who didn't show up to my last craft fair because of a little rain . I managed to sit through two long days of cold, cloudy, wet weather with my wares.....How is sitting at home, warm and dry any fun? Where is the sense of adventure? Where is the romance? Doesn't anyone realize that I have a $1700  blown head gasket to pay for???  How selfish can you be...............
Putting 350,000 miles on a vehicle by having to drive two hours one way in order to get to my symphony orchestra rehearsals is the most aggravating thing of all. My ensembles are among the lowest-paid orchestras in the country, and I deeply resent a Board of Trustees who have been unwilling to even attempt to increase the budget at all in the last, oh.......ten or fifteen years. An executive director who is adamantly opposed to listening to any suggestions about fund raising from a lowly musician is the icing on the cake (especially when, six years later this musician's same fund raising idea magically occurs to said exec to whom all of the credit goes when the event is a smashing success).
The fact that I chose to move to a community so far away from art and civilization occurs to me every now and then, but if I hadn't moved here, I never would have met the man I love. It is much more convenient for me to pass judgment on other peoples' insufficient efforts on my behalf. The older I get, the more I will do just that. Eventually I will reach the age when, apparently you are entitled to be resentful of everything and everybody, and it's considered endearing. At least in public.
All in all, everyone has things which drive them nuts, usually with regards to how other people are SO inconsiderate and incompetent. It boils down to displaced disappointment with our own failures. We want to be perfect, but there is no such thing. Pretending to be more perfect than everyone else doesn't make it so. It only gives them something to resent.