How to Embrace When Life Sucks
We can’t be happy all the time, even when others want us to
Sometimes everything is really freaking dark. Sometimes things are just going to sh$t. Why sugar coat it with toxic positivity? I can be a positive person, an optimist (which I consider myself to be), and still have dark days.
Today was one such day. With only two hours of sleep last night, I was ripe for a bad mood. Top that with a litany of things “going wrong”. The bank lost a large chunk of my money. Important errands I ran all day yielded lines, closures, and miscommunication. The four hours on the phone trying to get information from banks, the postal service, and more all ended up as fruitless endeavors. It was one of those: I should never have gotten out of bed days.
A Writer Writes, Right?
And now it’s 1:23 am and I’m still wide awake. Running on nothing. Wired, tired. Two hours of sleep in what will soon be, forty-eight hours. Not the best time to be making decisions or trying to write a blog. But what else can a writer do?
I haven’t been writing regularly and a part of me feels like it’s dying inside; which it is. A writer who’s not writing is like a footballer who doesn’t play football. A guitarist who can’t strum. A singer who’s lost her voice.
It’s a catch 22. When we feel crappy, we don’t want to pursue our passions but when we don’t pursue our passions we feel crappy.
Time Wasted on Mundane Necessities
I wasted another day trying to accomplish some rather large projects. Getting the paperwork for my bank account in Portugal notarized — only to hit another snag that will cost me more money and two more months of time. Calling fifteen different auto parts stores trying to get a passenger-side mirror for the one that was torn off by a tree. That’s an imperative too and yet after calling countless shops in Los Angeles and Tucson, the mirror is nowhere to be found. It’s on backorder for a year. Amazon has it but they won’t deliver it to my locker and I have no address. These are just two of my daily tasks that kept me from pursuing my passion. I have a list of twenty-three I was trying to accomplish today. I tried for nine hours straight, without a break, and accomplished nil.
Why Did I Choose This Lifestyle?
And didn’t I move into a van and become a full-time nomad to pursue my passion? But life is harder now. So much harder. Harder in ways I never imagined. Harder in ways the youtube videos and Instagram hotties don’t touch on. Harder in pretty much every way possible. Sure, everything takes longer as reported by the hotties but not just cooking or exercising, or showering. EVERYTHING. Getting a piece of bread takes longer because I have to find somewhere to park my colossal house. And this house doesn’t have water or even electricity. That’s a whole other story for a different time.
The point is that I’ve stifled myself. And not every day. Some days are easier but they are fewer and farther between now. I’ve had two “easy” days in the past two months. the rest have been raggedly painful.
All I’ve ever wanted to do is drink tea and write. It’s why I chose this lifestyle. and yet, four months in, I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve done just one of those things. Never both. Not yet.
But how can I keep saying “tomorrow” or “next week” or “next year”? I’m so discouraged I don’t even want tomorrow to come anymore because tomorrow will bring another handful of problems.
Perhaps my Mercury is in perpetual retrograde.
Happily, Bubbling, Bristle
While I’ve always considered myself a positive person, hard to tell from this post but those who know me comment first on my happy, bubbly personality, promise… I have never had an easy go of anything. I’m that person who sets forth on each new day with a dance in her step and inadvertently steps in dog shit, right outside her front door. That actually happened to me this week, no joke.
It’s like life says to me: “Nope, nope, nothing’s easy for you. you get to work crap jobs for forty years and then have a crap retirement. Oh, and by the way, you get to step in crap too. You won’t find love this lifetime and the people you called friends for the past twenty years will desert you in your time of need. Oh, and your family will call you names and **spit in your face.”
And I respond, “Really? That sounds fantastic! Where do I sign up?”
Sarcasm aside, it’s not that bad. Sometimes there’s one good day a week or one good hour in a day and sometimes that’s all we can hope for.
My current happy place, for example, was having dinner with amazing new friends tonight and watching Dune on my tiny laptop. Dune gives me a lady hard-on. The books. The movie. Sci-fi me up and I’m a blissful camper.
Can I Complain About Not Being Able to Complain?
So what do I have to complain about, really? Absolutely nothing. So things don’t go my way, usually. So I have no running water or power. So I write and read by flashlight. So I currently have insomnia and haven’t slept in two nights. So my back and neck are in spasm. So I’m not doing what I love. Will these things kill me? Maybe, but not likely.
I like to spout the quote by an unknown author: “If you can’t change your circumstances, change your perspective.”
Well, my perspective currently sucks, and that’s okay too.
It’s okay not being okay when things aren’t going well.
**my family doesn’t really spit in my face, that was said for dramatic effect. But they do call me names.
