No matter how many times I tell myself that winter is an impermanent situation, it never fails that at some point in February I lose all perspective.

This year it’s been nonstop: truck breaks down, neck breaks down, head breaks down, pipes freeze, truck gets stuck, hot water heater springs a leak, can’t sleep, replace sleeping with eating, etc etc (these have all happened in the last 28 days).

The real problem with it is that as soon as I lose perspective, I start making bad decisions; short sighted decisions based on the claustrophobia that, though I didn’t create the problem (and I don’t have the evil genius in me required to invent February in Newfoundland)—the losing of perspective about it is something I do have some control over. I’m just bad at it.

I guess it’s just got me thinking about our government, with, dare I say it, a smidgen of sympathy (if ever there was the smallest smidgen of anything). I started looking at their situation as if it were February. And one thing I know for sure doesn’t help me when I’ve totally lost it in winter madness is for anyone to yell at me about it. All that does is add to the intensity of the claustrophobia pushing me further into the depths of blunder.

What does help, and though I can’t expect it from anyone, is company who might listen to me wail about the misfortune that has befallen me (more than anyone else that has ever befallen misfortune, is how it always feels), but company who will gently take my beloved acoustic guitar from my hands as I am about to stoke the dwindling fire with it, and pass me another blanket.

Of course I know it is counterproductive to burn my guitar for the scant bit of heat that it would put out, but when I’m februaried I can’t always appreciate the difference. But when I’m strumming away around a summer campfire, I sure am grateful that I had a friend who kept it safe when things were at their bleakest.

I’m worried our government is about to burn our guitars, so to speak. We’re seeing short-sighted decisions that, in the distortion of a long February, seem like the long-sighted decisions to them. And we need to make sure it doesn’t happen, because there’s no coming back from ash.

I keep hearing the echo that they didn’t make the mess we’re in, which, we ALL understand. The current government did not create the complex series of bad, bad decisions over years and years that get us to here. But we’re not saying they did. We’re saying that you’re making bad decisions now in the delirium.

So let’s put down the guitar, we won’t burn that just yet, and hang on tight and we’ll be sitting around the campfire before too long.