Have you ever had one of those days where it just feels like you’re pushing the proverbial shit up hill? No matter how hard you try to remain positive, everything around you is pushing for the negative.
It’s hard to find the strength to overcome these situations most of the time. So what should one do? Search for the positive, or search for the strength to overcome the negative? They sound the same because they both result in the same thing, but one is easier to obtain than the other.
Searching for the positive requires you to look externally, and if everything around you is pushing for the negative it’s almost always impossible to achieve. But if you search for the strength to overcome the negative from within, you’ll generally find it. That’s what I’ve found anyway.
I gave up yesterday, for numerous reasons. Work being a small part of it, other stuff being a huge part. Sometimes you’ve just got to realise that you can’t control everything. That messes with me though. I’m a control freak, and an artist. If something isn’t the way I believe it should be I learn to change it, and then I attempt to make it the way I want it to be…and then I compromise.
Yesterday I couldn’t find the strength that I needed, and ended up venting at the people that don’t deserve it.
But then, last night while drifting off, I decided to let the currently-negative things play out. The scene will end soon enough, and at that point I can reassess and see what I can do to influence the next.
Instead of trying to control something that I clearly don’t have control over, I decided to control something that I did. Myself. A sudden surge of calmness came over me. I’ve done all I can to steer the other stuff in what I believe to be the right direction, and with work I’m doing what I believe is best. The scene just needs to play itself out, and when it does I’ll be ready.
One Comment
Many years ago, I went through the exact same thing as you. I had given up, both mentally and physically. I was on 8 weeks of leave all up because of the stress I was under. The doctor wrote me a certificate that would cover everything that was owing to me because I was sick and just not getting better, since I didn’t have either the strength or the will to. I was safe in my sickness.
One morning I woke up and looked straight up out of my bedroom window at the completely clear blue sky with the warm sun coming in, and something just clicked. When we were young, before being thrust into school life, we would look at simple things in nature and be purely fascinated and in awe at the wonderful things around us and be happy. A simple video of a ladybug crawling through the grass when you looked through the square window on Play Skool was top shelf entertainment. Back at the roots of our innocence, happiness and satisfaction was easier to find. I had that same snap of calm you did, but it hit me like a tidal wave.
Now, I still get kicked down hard, and generally when I try to rectify the situation I just get kicked harder for sticking my neck out. But each kick for me is a lesson in life of what NOT to do to people, and hopefully one day, I’ll have learned enough to be a bigger person than them and get my chance to remind people of that original innocence.