When it rains, it pours, huh? True story, but no Gulags.

Pretty much my whole day today has been devoted to brooding over things I cannot change. Lets be honest here, that is pretty ridiculous. Granted, the quote "when it rains, it pours" is very applicable to my life right now, and there are many things that aren't going quite the way I'd like them to. However, when I look back on my day, I realize it was mostly spent feeling stressed and morose. When I wasn't feeling those emotions, I was contenplating how negative I should be on this new blog I have created. Examples of the thoughts that went through my head are: Should I share all of the bad things that happened today? Or is that just being needlessly negative? Should I really be writing about how even though bad things are happening to me, I need to keep a positive outlook and realize that they could be worse? I mean hey, as Liz's friend would say, I could be under the influence of The Gulag (a government agency that administered penal labor camps in the Solviet Union). Or maybe I should just write about how I have accepted these emotions as part of the inevitable process of human suffering, and allow myself to feel them and then continue to accomplish my goals (we'll chalk that thought up to the acceptance and committment therapy presentation I saw today).

These thoughts and several other possibilities were running wild in my head. Again, this is ridiculous, I realize this. I even thought of some cool metaphors to analogize my suffering (e.g., I was a Jenga tower, and someone kept pulling out Jenga blocks to see how much it would take for me to breakdown). I drafted some blog posts to try these different perspectives on for size, but honestly, nothing seemed like quite the right thing to post...

Now that the day is over, I just feel kind of sheepish. I mean, I did get some things done today, but considering how much time I spent in my office, I should have finished all of my studying, not 1/16th of it. It would be a little cliche for me to go on about how my suffering is nothing compared to millions of other people in other situations, although objectively, this is true. Instead, I'll simply say that no matter how bad things get, stewing in negativity all day long is never a good solution. I mean, I actually think I did fairly well today. I didn't breakdown or flip out, but I still spent simply too much time thinking about things I could not change. I am not upset with my inability to get out of that funk; I know snapping out of those kinds of mood is a hard skill to learn. But looking back on the day's productivity, I realize it is a skill I'd really like to learn. Luckily, these negative things in my life have not been resolved, and therefore, I get another crack at positivity tomorrow.

So, I guess there is one major positive thing to take away from today... life is too short to spend your time sulking... after all, I'm not living under The Gulag regime and should probably take advantage of it.