I am regretful as I struggle to keep my eyes open to write this blog. Common sense tells me that I need to go to bed and rest, but my dedication to this project compels me otherwise.
I am regretful today because I failed. I was supposed to do something nice for someone else, and my plan failed. This morning, when I woke up, I decided what my challenge for today would be. I decided that for an entire day, I was not going to say anything mean about anyone else. And boy, did I fail.
It surprised me, how angry I am. I knew I was erratic when provoked, but this attitude was prevalent the entire day. So I suppose it was not a total failure, seeing as I was very much aware of my behavior for the past fourteen or so hours. But I couldn’t believe my reactions to the smallest of stimuli. Granted, it was far from a stress-free day, but that’s no excuse. I was angry and condescending towards people who I’ve never even talked to, for no reason at all. Sure, if asked, I could come up with a pretty legitimate reason, I am a debater after all, but the thing is, none of those reasons mattered in the moments. In the moments that I was talking to someone, or about someone, the reasons for my hatred were nonexistent.
This storm of negativity that follows me like a cartoon cloud in a bad Sunday morning comic isn’t healthy. I’m almost completely positive that, had I not been so angry for these stupid, insignificant reasons, I would have reacted much less poorly to the stressful events of the day.
Before I move on within myself and let go of the anger I’ve felt towards people who deserve my hatred, I have to stop being angry with people who annoy me in stupid ways. Being so high strung and on edge constantly is only making me more paranoid of being hurt. Again. I have to start trusting people again, I have to, pardon the cliche, live and let live!
I’m going to try this experiment again on the next available Thursday. Not next Thursday, however. Because to celebrate my accomplishment for making it to day 100, I’m going to spend days 94-100 with my Tuesday topic. For an entire week, I will blog everyday about something good that happens to me. And who knows, maybe this exercise will help me with the anger problem I discovered. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Dear Bri, I’ve noticed that when I make a single rude or mean comment, even in joking, it opens re flood gates andthe singular hardest thing in the world at that point is to stop saying things like that. I think something that will help in the future is to notice when you’re making a string of comments like that rather than trying to focus on stopping the mean ones you should do two things: one is to purposefully start saying nice things. Even if they’re little. “oh you look nice today” and second is to just remember the most recent time that you were really happy and to tell yourself that you deserve to be that happy again and to honestly believe it. The saying nice things will make you feel good and keep you happy.
Btw, I miss being able to blog on here. I know you’ll say i didn’t do it much anyway and that I can blog on the livejournal you made me (thanks). But, it’s just not the same. And also, sorry if this comment made no sense, I’m typing it on my iPod late at night.
I have to say Bri that you are not the most rude or negative of people. Still it is something that we all battle with. When you talked of “live and let live” it reminded me of the Beatles tune “Let it Be” Its also easy to slip into habits of being rude and negative when you let your friends be negative and rude. I think the hardest thing is to not follow the trend of others, at least it is for me. I think we all want to fit in a follow the trend of sarcasm and then gradually we begin to ignore the positive things we used to notice. I don’t no if this made any sense.
It makes total sense, Matt, I know what you mean completely.