THURSDAY

So I’m trying out this “positive attitude” thing at work this week. It takes a certain amount of effort, but I’m looking for ways to think and act in upbeat and cheerful way. Today was crazy busy and there were a few moments when I was tempted to just slump to the floor and crash and burn. But for the most part, thinking positively helped me identify all the things that went RIGHT today.

Along those lines, at the noon time weight loss meeting that I led, one of the members told me that the only way could she could be successful is to rigidly adhere to “the program” and never go over her daily target. At the risk of giving advice (always a sketchy thing if you want to TRULY help people), I suggested that she try giving herself a break. “You can’t really be happy can you, if you say you’ll never have pizza or birthday cake or a glass of wine again?” I urged her to try “giving in” once or twice this week “just to see what happens.”

Maybe I’m crazy, but my goal was to hold out a ray of hope. I mean it’s all good and well to have determination and a tenacious desire to succeed. But if you’re just a regular joe like me, and you feel tempted and weak and frustrated from time to time, I think it’s nice to know that you don’t have to be hard core to be successful.

FRIDAY

I never posted yesterday because I discovered that I had messed up my blog code somehow and nothing was working right. So I ended up spending about three hours delving into potential solutions that would get things back up and running. Since I own my own domain name, and I hired a (now-defunct) design company to create my blog, *AND* I have contracted with a private hosting company, there’s no “help desk” for me to go to. Trust me, figuring out the intricacies of FTP, cascading style sheets, XTML codes, etc. is not exactly my cup of tea. The downside of having a completely ad-free website!

At any rate, I have a patchwork solution in place while I figure out what to do next.

I actually had to laugh somewhat ruefully when I re-read what I started to write last night. That’s because today my good mood soured late in the afternoon and I went through a couple of miserable hours feeling frustrated, angry and exasperated. Now that it’s official that my closest friend and ally is being layed off next week, it’s hard for me to be as sanguine about everything. Not only will I miss her on a friendship level, I’m completely overwhelmed at the idea of taking on her work because she is way smarter than me.

As a result, I was trying harder than ever to do double the work and be completely “perfect” today, and all that led me to do was make more (and bigger) mistakes than usual. Argh! By the time I left the office at 6 p.m., I thought I was going to scream.

Fortunately, I ride my bike to and from work, and tonight was a very beautiful evening. We’re experiencing a severe drought here, which means that it’s been clear and warm all month. My ride home was therefore pretty enjoyable, as I sped through light traffic in a pleasantly cool breeze. After about 15 minutes, I was able to breathe, relax and –eventually– even smile.

That didn’t stop me from having ice cream the moment I got home. Chocolate cures everything.