My reputation kind of sucks, I admit it.
I’m anything but Grim though.
On the contrary, I wake up each morning refreshed and ready for my day.
I kiss my wife and kids, and I even make breakfast while she gets them dressed!
You have to nurture the children, or they’ll resent you.
My wife teaches finishing school to the underprivileged Succubae on the other side of town.
I mean, yes my job technically sucks from a regular human's point of view, but I'm not who you think I am.
I mean, think of ice melting into water that then boils into steam, you know?
What humans call death is no more the end of life than steam is the end of ice.
Ok, I get that you probably think I’m nuts.
I may well be, I’ve been on the job quite a long time, and I don’t take days off or have holidays, plus I’m always on call.
That can make anyone a tad cray-cray.
Still, it’s what I do for a living, I reap.
I’m just not grim anymore.
That’s the message I really want you to take home today, I’m actually very optimistic so…
In very real terms I’m The Optimistic Reaper.
I invest in the stock market, but not recklessly.
I have a mixed portfolio.
Seventy-five percent of my assets are in the safest mutual funds I can find, but I still take some risks.
Like right now, I’m deep into this meatball delivery service, sitting pretty heavy in it, in fact, I'm financially exposed in real-world economist's terms.
Don't look at me like that, it’s not as if I’m omniscient.
I’m actually “just a guy” at heart, like any of you.
You might say I’m a real working stiff!
Har har, See? I'm not so inhuman, that was humor!
I mean, yeah the kids would call it a dad joke, but I think my humor is a testament to my optimism.
Would a “Grim” Reaper tell you a dad joke?
Hell no!
You know, I’ve gotten in better shape over the years, too.
I gave up eating altogether for a few millennia there and I ended up nothing but skin and bones.
I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures.
It’s just hard to look in the mirror when you feel fat.
Do you want grim?
Try feeling fat all the time!
I don’t fret over my weight anymore though, heck if I really must know I’m probably fifteen-twenty pounds overweight right now.
But you know, I feel good.
I have an amazing level of physical energy right now.
I guess I feel like I've taken my body image back from those dark days of skeletal features, and the people who used to say I was just a "corpse hiding behind a black cloak."
Work is still a grind though folks.
The constant travel really gets to you too.
I mean sure I have an infinite number of air miles, but when you have to be everywhere all the time the only place you really want to be is home.
It’s tough to be away from home so often.
I miss my kids' special events.
I miss my wife constantly.
Then there’s the part where you meet a lot of people, but you always meet them at their worst.
The flower shop guy?
Yeah, he gets to meet happy people, like in that movie Bed of Flowers with young Christian Slater.
For me it's just the opposite, people are at their worst when I meet them.
Most of them don’t even want to see me at all, let alone accept my inevitability.
It’s really tough to keep an open, optimistic mind when everyone is so very negative when you meet them.
It takes a special kind of inner work, shadow work, to come to terms with this kind of job.
To be blunt: I had to search for the part of me that took pleasure and joy in the suffering I brought to others.
I had to go deep, deep down to the blackest of my inner blackness to find the source of my joy in people's pain.
To get there, I had to reflect on why exactly I enjoyed the screams of agony and moaning cries….
Oh, the moaning, there was so much beautiful moaning!
Once I found that infernal place of joy in my heart I was compelled to confront it within me in order to come to terms with my, well to be blunt, I was a sadist.
I took pleasure in my Death Touch and the terror it brought.
I had to own the bloodlust I felt, that swelled within me every time I laid my hand on a bitch’s shoulder.
I did do the actual work though.
Oh, I have those receipts I promise you!
A lot of people say they do the work, but they don’t do the actual work.
Heeeey, c'mon now, I know what you’re thinking!
That doesn't sound optimistic.
I’m also a Realist, I never said I'd become a flake.
Regardless, I’m not bullshitting you.
I’ve sat for years reflecting on all this stuff.
Analyzing my sadism in order to confront my own shadow has really freed my soul.
That’s some seriously deep Jungian-therapy-shit right there.
Nowadays I simply see the job as the necessary force of nature that it is.
I get bored when they scream or lash out now.
I never get angry at them or prolong their agony by holding my finger just an inch from their armpit and threatening to tickle them to death… I mean, *Shoulder Shrug*
I just don’t get excited doing my job anymore, I’m always even keel.
I spend my days optimistically reaping souls.
Death isn’t the end of your lives any more than steam is the end of ice!
You know I started exercising too?
I Put the time in there too!
Got those receipts too, lookit these PYTHONS!
Okay, *laughing* I didn’t actually do heavy weights.
I guess they’re more like Asps or Rattlesnakes.*still flexing*
I’m not a real musclehead.
I did a lot of general work, some lower body stuff, aerobics, that kind of thing.
I started doing the Caber Toss though, that’s where my snakes come in. *Flexes*
My wife suggested I take up a sport to help me move on from my sadism.
We did one of those ancestry sites and I found out I’m almost 71.47593% Scottish.
With that knowledge, I decided to dedicate my sporting time to an ethnic pursuit, which for me became the aforementioned Caber Toss.
The whole experience has been so rewarding for me!
I spoiled myself with the ancestry thing, I don't usually do that.
Higher beings like us have separate genetic legacies from humans, but we originate from many of the same places in the world any of you might.
I always thought Mother was Danish, but it turns out we are Highlanders, just like the guy in the movies!
“There can be only one!”
“Ah’m Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod!” *In a bad Scottish accent*
Ah, that’s not exactly true, I guess.
I never actually got to cut off anyone’s head, and I'm not actually immortal either.
Still, I have been richly rewarded in learning that I am One True Scotsman!
Dad joke, ya gotta love 'em.
I’ve gotten really good at tossing the 'ole tree trunk.
I'll tell ya what, there is no one anywhere who you could call “grim” who can toss a caber like this ’ole boy, lemme tell ya! *Thumbs Chest*
I’ve been practicing my accent by rewatching every episode of Star Trek: The Original Series too.
I won’t give you all I got, however. *Bad accent returns*
It’s just nice to be able to speak like your own people do once in a while.
It builds one’s sense of optimism when you connect with your ethnic heritage!
Sex has gotten a little thorny between the wifey and I though.
That is one area I still feel pretty grim about.
We get along great, it’s just that we’re more like roommates than married lovers.
We used to be swingers too, we’re not old fogies!
Most of the older gods were, Zeus, Odin, Sheeba, Quetzalcoatl…
It just got to be a bit too much when the Greek Gods came around.
The kids were getting older, and we both realized we wanted to settle down.
24/7 naked bodies are not the fantasy some would have you believe.
I guess that’s still optimistic in a way...
I’m rambling now.
You’re probably ready to move on.
I don’t know if I’ve been able to convince you that I’m optimistic, but I can promise you one thing: I haven’t lied once!
There’s a lot I haven’t told you because you’re a busy person and I didn’t want to take too much of your time.
Besides if I give you an essay-length soliloquy about how I’m not grim you’ll get bored and disbelieve me anyway.
Then you’ll just start calling me the Grim Reaper all over again!
I guess that’s the nice thing about life in the US compared to life back in the homeland.
Don’t get me wrong, It’s not that I ever lived in Scotland myself. I’m speaking generally here.
In the States, you can always reinvent yourself, you know?
It’s not like that in Europe.
Let’s say it’s the ’80s, for instance, and you live back East, and you happen to reap someone indiscriminately who was supposed to keep track of a certain nuclear reactor and then there’s this big boom…
Well here in the States you can just pack up, move out past the Ohio Valley and take up Caber Tossing.
The US is just so much more optimistic than Europe!
So that’s who I am in a nutshell.
I’ve gone through some hard times, just like Kenny Rodgers did.
I was a wild guy once in my life.
I caused some hardships too, and I’ve accepted this.
I divorced my first wife.
Both my kids needed braces, which cost me several years' salary.
The whole Three Mile Island Nuclear Disaster happened.
I moved out here to Cincinnati.
Great AM rock radio station out here, let me tell you.
Crazy DJ.
Love you, Dr. Johnny Fever.
I really was grim for a long time though.
So many things I haven’t mentioned and the roles I played in them.
The Crusades.
American Colonization.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade… Yep.
I was around for it all, and it was all very, very grim.
That’s not me anymore.
I’m a good person at heart.
I do my job because that’s what my job is and someone has to help energy make its transition, but I don’t bring the work home anymore.
When I’m with my family, I’m just with my family.
Yes, I still take the lives of angry, unwilling people every time I clock in, but I don’t let their negativity become mine, and I don’t react to it.
I admit I sometimes will shush them quietly with a finger if they’re particularly troublesome, I will own that one. *Touches index finger to mouth*
Still, all things equal, I’m filled with love and appreciation for everyone and everything which first and foremost includes ME!!!
I wouldn’t be the Optimistic Reaper if hadn’t figured out how to love myself first!
