There's no such thing as bad news

News is only as bad or as good as you, yourself make it.

Today my worst fears were confirmed. I have now joined the ranks of the other few million unemployed. Financially I'll be hurting big time and at my age, seventy three, I can't see too many companies jumping to employ me. I've been expecting the bad news for a few weeks and had been preparing myself for it. However, now it has happened I feel strangely relieved. I'll just have to start all over again. No point in being depressed, I'm free. No more business phone calls late at night and a 50% reduction in emails. What I will certainly miss most will be the travel; which is something I have been lucky to be doing all my life.

Thankfully I am and have always been an optimist; half full glass and all that. It's not done me any harm so far and it has kept me a happy character. In my short - it seems so - life I've seen and suffered the ups and downs that fate inevitably throws at all of us when we least expect them. Accepting these times of deep sadness or sublime happiness as inevitable chapters in the book of life is what it's all about.

One thing I'm determined to take advantage of during my new found freedom will be the time to try and put on paper my daily feelings; the sort of diary which I should have started way back in the ever diminishing past.