There’s still coffee in my mug and my new world order dictates that I am not free to leave home while coffee lingers for me to enjoy. Hey, it’s out of my hands, people. So, I thought I’d stop by.
I had about the most antisocial weekend I’ve had in a long, long time. Over the last seven months, though, I became so focused on the negatives in life and forgot all the important things — you know, trivial stuff like health, diet, exercise, peace of mind… And now it’s the hard part of bringing all those crucial elements back into play. This weekend, though, the seven months of non-stop hard work and just coping all came home to roost and rest needed to be had.
It’s official: I’m trying to make radical but necessary changes across the board. There’s nothing scarier, really, than waking up one day and realizing that you profoundly dislike who you’re becoming. That’s where I was at. I became a hybrid of certain people in my life who baffle me for their uncanny grasp of how to be unhappy. Negatives swirl around me right now, and have been for months, and I’m having to constantly check my attitude at the door: No negatives need apply here.
I’m not one of these people that believes happiness is only a choice. I believe body chemistry can fuck up the mix and we can become pretty unbalanced — but once you have that under control, then, yeah, happiness is pretty much a choice.
I’m at that point where I know my chemistry is pretty much under control. The only tweaking it needs is what I can provide dietarily by eating better (such as going cold turkey in cutting out butter, like I’ve done this weekend) and by adding some exercise into the mix. The attitude, though, needs further adjustment.
The last several months have been spent working just a few feet away from someone who was clouded in negativity. A “how are you” always received “oh, I’m alive”, as if living was some archaic form of punishment. Somewhere along the lines, it became permission for me to bitch and moan. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan. I swear, at one point I had Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back” on perma-repeat in my bouncy little noggin. “I can bitch, I can bitch, because I’m better than you — it’s the way that I move, the things that I do.”
At least I’m out of the environment that became so permissive towards negativity. Where I’m at now is a can-do, will-do, roger-wilco kinda place where everyone’s empowered and entitled. It should be easy to flip the switch now that I’m getting over this persistent bug of mine and will daily be in a more charged place. That I have four-day weeks the next two weeks is just icing on the cake. By the end of all this, I will be rested up again, and well on my way to the New Steff World Order.
I guess it’s easy enough to make change. I don’t like this, ergo I’m changing. Poof. Done. When I quit my job, I did so by imposing caveats upon myself. I’m quitting so that I may focus more on myself. I’m quitting so that I have more time to cook again. I’m quitting so I can return to exercising and get myself in better health. I’m quitting so I have more time at my disposal. I’m quitting so I will write more. I wasn’t just quitting because I was unhappy; I was quitting because it was the cause of all the reasons creating my unhappiness. Happiness, for me, is about control over my life, about being healthy, about having freedom and the time to do more important things with my days. But happiness doesn’t come at the result of a decision; it’s the net result of all that we do with our lives. Wanting to be happy doesn’t make it so.
Lately, though, I’m still realizing how far away from that goal I am. Last week, one night, I was riding home on my scooter and got pissed off at some driver. What’d I do? Yelled “fuck you” at the guy, and what happens? I’m sitting there feeling like the biggest ass in the world because everyone, of course, knows it’s the chick on the scooter with the attitude — and I was stuck at a red light. Oh, the shame. The shame! Real grown-up, Steff.
Road rage, methinks, is the emotional canary in the coal mine — if you’re road-raging, you probably have issues. Me, though, I’ve been road-raging for a while. The other day was when I finally had the light flick on and realized that I don’t like being that person. So, I’m done with that, but it goes to show you that it’s the little moments when we’re clearly not being ourselves that we realize just how far from who we actually are that we’ve wound up being.
Nothing quite like feeling like a chastised 5-year-old in public to make you realize just how much growing up maybe still needs to happen. I so don’t wear rage well. It’s so unattractive. How I got like that kind of baffles me, but then again, the drivers in this city can be pretty baffling. Yet, still, no excuse. I’m better than that.
My lowly goals this week? Avoid butter, eat fish once or twice, not freak out because things aren’t going my way, and to be thankful, even just a bit, that life’s back on my terms again — a little gratitude each and every day might be a great start in this new life o’ mine. Baby steps.
Meanwhile, I’ll get off this self-involved topic soonish and see what else gets me thinking. I wanted to write about this 24-year-old kid who’s just married an 82-year-old woman in Brazil, and they’ve been together for 9 years, but I kept getting the geriatric heeby-geebies, so no posting for you. I mean, ugh. Old-people sex with young people is just a little too Harold and Maude in a bad way for me. In a really, really bad way.
(And if you’ve never seen Harold and Maude and you dig other movies I love like Donnie Darko, Amelie, etc, then maybe your video store needs some visiting. ’70s cult classic you NEED to see. No, really.)
