I am not an optimist.
I never have been and there is a very high chance I never will be.
It is not that I do not greatly admire those who are capable of looking forward to things with nothing but the best of expectations, and it is not that I think it is silly or lesser to think optimistically.
Basically, optimism and I do not have the greatest track record.
Obviously, as I have been alive for 22 years, some bad things have happened to me.
I was a pessimist, however, possibly right from the beginning.
I generally understand optimism to be hoping for the best while acknowledging that something bad might happen.
The way I tend to view things is that if you hope for the best, then you are just going to be more disappointed when it does not happen.
I do know this is an absurdly negative outlook, and while I cannot whole-heartedly embrace optimism, I would almost definitely benefit from sitting around some sort of happy medium.
My pessimism stems from being an obsessive perfectionist who has almost always been an over-achiever.
Throughout my academic career, I have been fixated on detail and on doing more than I technically need to do.
I am reluctant to even start doing something until I am 100% certain I understand it and that I am going to do the best that I can do.
But on the flip side, I am also often lacking in motivation and sceptical about doing anything I am not intellectually or emotionally invested in.
Naturally, when you are this highly strung, when things go wrong they go very wrong and so it seems pretty reasonable to feel a little pessimistic about things before going into them.
If something I am trying to achieve does not completely fall apart, then I am over the moon about it, never mind weeks and months of expecting the worst.
It is possible that I counter this tendency towards the negative in my life by fully embracing ridiculous and asinine elements of pop culture.
Not only do I frequently enjoy items of clothing that make me look like a piece of cotton candy, but I also love pop music to my very core.
Before I accepted this, I was a lot less happy than I am now, and I'm so glad that is no longer the case.
While I might tell my friends with absolute sincerity that I am going to fail a test, or my life is definitely ruined, and solidly refuse to accept any other possible outcome suggested to me, I will fill my head with pop music positive-thinking garbage I definitely do not believe in but unthinkingly and enthusiastically consume.
For example, last night, after a particularly terrible week of exams and stress, I went to watch the One Direction movie with my dad, a feel-good story about five young lads who overcome all odds to become hugely successful and wildly wealthy.
It did not change my outlook on my future even a little bit - in fact it made me more determined that things could never work out quite that well - but it was an amusing way to distract myself from reality.
I am only as negative as I am making out when I am in the throes of something terrible.
There is always the chance with me that I will be positive about my future for maybe half an hour after I have had a success, and that sure is something.
And of course I am not the sort of person who thinks this way about other people.
My friends are privy to torrents of positive outlooks on their lives when they are responding to things in the same way as me.
I feel I am yet to meet and befriend an honest-to-God optimist.
Maybe they do not exist, and maybe it is just pessimists telling their friends the happy things they do not tell themselves.
Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
