Quit Fighting Life

I've made a decision to be happy. It's not a huge leap. As a rule, I'm a pretty upbeat-every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining-better-luck-tomorrow-it's-all-for-a-reason type gal. But I've been observing a tendency I have lately to, for lack of a better word, fight with life.

It's usually over small things. I need to run errands, cook dinner, sort through a mess of e-mails and suddenly I'm sighing and feeling drained and wishing the stupid task would just be over with so I can get on with what's REALLY important in life (whatever that may be). All this wishing the mundane details of life away is wasteful. It's the whole "putting off being happy until life is perfect" syndrome. They are always always always going to be petty details and boring tasks to deal with--why not approach them with a positive attitude?

It's been a mere 48-hours on my "Look at me, I am joy" campaign and it's going well. Instead of feeling harried and like I'm wasting time, I'm working on gratitude. So the dishwasher needs to be emptied. Yea--I have a dishwasher! I need to photocopy clips to send to an editor--I'll pet the cat while the copies are printing (versus my normal mode of standing over the printer snarling, "Run out of ink and I will END you.")

I did a quick journal entry the other day and ran through my favorite exercise of describing my perfect day. When I read it back I was astonished to realize that I pretty much described my days as they are now. Only, I wasn't having that "life is so perfect" feeling. So where's the disconnect? Future living. I'm so concerned over what I should be doing or what still needs to be done that I'm fighting a constant mental battle. Hurry, hurry, hurry seems to be the refrain running through my mind. And you know what? It's making me tired. 

So I'm giving it a go of realizing why each day is a perfect day. Lucky for me, I live with Blair, the god of eternal optimism who rolls out of bed each day at 4:30 AM proclaiming "It's going to be a great day!" Where my usual inclination is to smack him, maybe if I work hard I can join him. 

Just not at 4:30 AM. I'll be joyous more around 6.

Cheers,

Dena