Three Good Things

Three good things.

This is an exercise I give my students in personal adjustment (positive psychology) every year. For a week, find each day a good thing that happened. Note it, then explain why it happened to you.

I feel like doing it today.

Thing 1: I got to work and there was a parking spot in the closest lot. As it was noon, this was a big thing.

Why it happened: because I didn’t wait till the absolute last minute to get to work.

Thing 2: I got a little quality time with Pumpkin

Why it happened: Because we adopted Pumpkin off someone’s porch and give her love and pets.

Thing 3: The weather is gorgeous.

Why it happened: Probably global warming. Not so good. But I’m enjoying the weather, because it’s supposed to drop to the 30s tomorrow.

Maybe this will help me appreciate the little things!

Day 3 of COVID

I guess I’m not all better. I thought heck, day 3 of COVID and I’ll be back to normal. My nose is even less stuffy than it’s been. It’s just a severe cold.

Then I got up to write this blog. Suddenly I’m shaky, tired, and altogether ~~unfit for prime time~~^1.out of it. I needed to get out of bed, though, because my time in bed had starved me of light and life.

So I sit next to a sunny window that’s so perky it’s making me a little grouchy. “It’s bright! It’s sunny!” Look, it’s 29 degrees out and I’m sick. Can you deliver me a hot toddy to help me get through this?

I’m too tired to be bored and too bored to be tired.

Time to write. Or fall asleep. Or something.

Back before there were streaming services, there was this thing called television. Television shows had their own time slots, and you could only watch them during those times. The slots in the evening, from 7 to 9 PM, were known as prime time slots. Obviously, television companies showed their best shows then to get the best audience numbers and make their advertisers (where the money came from) happier. If a show was outside of prime time, they did not expect it to perform well in the prime slots. Therefore, unfit for prime time means “not at my best” with a hint of “not presentable.”

A Hole in the Clouds

Out the window, the clouds move away after spilling the gentlest of rain on us. In the clouds, blue-purple and grey, the slightest glimpse of light spills through. This is my mood, perfectly. My life has been grey lately, neither full of exuberant life nor beset by torrents. One day follows another and I do the same thing day after day, more or less. This is not a bad thing.

I worry more about the exuberant than the torrential. I weather storms well and have done all my life. Bright sunshine has its own violence, smashing calm just as much as lightning does. Great happiness tempts its opposite more than great depression does.

I want a little light peeking through my clouds, a bubble of joy, not the torrent that tells me that life is out of control. Because the latter is mania, and it scares me more than depression.

Here’s for a calm day.

Day 47 Reflection: Rejoice

I don’t feel too much like rejoicing today. I overindulged in Easter candy. I didn’t sleep well last night and now I feel hung over.

But it’s a beautiful day, the perfect day for Easter. I will go outside today and set up some of my raised beds, for Spring is here and I do not need to wait any more.

I will eat breakfast, and go out, and clean my yard, and look at growing things. I will remember the lines from a poem by ee cummings:

I who was dead am alive again today,
and today is the sun’s birthday

— ee cummings, “I thank you God”

It is part of the human condition to rejoice.