For the past 13 years, I was a cynic.  Then I woke up one day and found out that I was an optimist.  Labels like cynic and optimist are not titles one can claim for themselves, they need to be bestowed upon you by your friends and associates.  Because of that, a label like optimist says more about with whom you associate than yourself.  But then again, with whom we associate speaks volumes about who we are.

So anyway, one day I was a cynic, the next an optimist.  What happened?  I changed jobs, so I suppose my cynicism was rooted in my job.  At my previous place of employ, Evil(™), part of my job included doing risk assessments.  Nothing cloak and dagger like you might be thinking, but I won't say what just to keep the mystery going.  Most of us engage in these type of assessments every day.  Other terms are cost-benefit analysis, impact analysis, opportunity-cost.  Same concept, just applied differently.  When you do these things as part of your day to day work, you start seeing everything through that lens of probability.  For example, yes I have a not so secret desire to be frozen and brought back to life in the distant future.  Most people say, silly that will never happen, we don't even have the technology to freeze you appropriately.  Yes, that's true but the optimist in me says "I'm already dead, what the hell, not like it's going to make me more dead."  The cynic says well there's a chance that when I am defrosted it's because the universe has been taken over by aliens and they need an undead slave force.  Yeah, I kinda think that way about everything.  (I have a probability table and 3-D chart of several possible outcomes.)

But now I work at Good(™) and apparently I am a ball of sunshine.  Good(™) is a public sector environmental agency working to keep us all safe.  So while I still do risk assessments, the 'weight' of what I would assess as being highly improbable has changed.  Stuff that I used to think as highly unlikely has actually happened in the history of our agency  and would most likely happen again.    So here I am, getting used to my new spot of sunshine and worried that as time goes by I will slip from optimist, bypass cynic and head to full on pessimist.  Thankfully I am sure my friends will keep me grounded, or am I just being optimistic?