Maintain a positive attitude

...while I don’t maintain a positive attitude all the time, I have gotten pretty good at improving my attitude when it’s crappy. That’s good enough for me.

I have a bad cold. Coughing, stuffy nose, fatigue, dizziness. No fever, so I know it’s not serious. But I feel like crap.

This is compounded by the fact that I almost NEVER get sick. I’m just not used to it. Thus, I am a total wuss about it. It’s also compounded by the fact that I don’t take any cold medications to fight the symptoms unless I’m DYING. The decongestants make my heart race and keep me up all night, and all the others upset my stomach. Plus they seem to make colds drag on longer than if I DON’T take them.

I’m trying to think about the positive. Actually, I just thought of something. A friend invited me over to her house this evening for smoking ‘n drinking ‘n watching bad movies. I am sad because I would have liked to go – but the good part is, I have an excuse (a good one) to refrain from smoking all substances. I’m tempted to smoke because it would make my body aches go away, at least temporarily. But I would probably feel much worse the next day, both physically and mentally for giving in to temptation.

So, there IS a silver lining even in the most unpleasant viral illness.

...as a sidenote, you’d be amazed at how much a bad attitude can be improved through regular, nourishing hot meals. ;) When I am hungry, everything seems awful. So: eat breakfast! Eat fat (good fats in moderation, I mean)! Eat meat (good quality meat; or at least make sure you eat enough veg. protein, plz.)! Adequate fuel = more confidence and less anxiety.

I realized last night that I haven’t been working on this goal – cultivating a positive attitude – so much as I’ve been bemoaning the things that challenge me and tempt me to be negative.

So, last night, I tried instead to really focus on the positive. It was difficult: it’s -7 degrees F here right now, and was nearly this cold yesterday. As a result, my car’s testy clutch started acting up again, working or not working erratically. Kind of freaky: when the roads are icy, it’s not a really good time for your wheels to be spinning unpredictably.

However, I managed to get to work and back. I worried a bit last night, thinking about what I would do if I needed a new car. But then I decided to quit visualizing the worst case scenario and to start trying to visualize positive scenarios. The clutch might improve as the weather warms; it might be the slave cylinder instead of the clutch assembly itself, and it might be not that much to fix or I might even be able to replace it myself (I found directions online and they actually don’t look that impossible); or I might have to get a new car, but then I would have a new(er) car and that’s exciting right?

Anyway, this morning the clutch is still weird but it seems slightly better – or maybe I’ve just figured out how to drive when it’s doing this. In any case, I feel much better even though the circumstances haven’t changed yet.

Sis went to the retinal specialist and found out that the blood vessels are called “Fuch’s spots”...it’s essentially macular degeneration – she is quite myopic (as am I) and the elogation of the eyeball has caused the retina to stretch and tear microscopically, causes leakage/swelling. The damage is probably permanent, and now she has to decide on treatment. Whatever she decides, it’s going to be expensive. She’s already up to her ass in debt from her first semester grad school, and now she has to decide whether to continue. This is just not fair (but what is, I guess? I suppose she is lucky to be healthy otherwise).

I haven’t heard from her yet whether this is limited to just the one eye – I hope so, but if it’s caused by myopia, then the other eye might be susceptible as well. And it means that I also have to watch out for it, because we have similar vision issues.

Boy, having a name for it really doesn’t make it any easier.

So, I’ve been doing a good job keeping a positive attitude in regards to my own life – but now I have something else to worry about.

My younger sister (who is in grad school right now) had been having blurry vision in one of her eyes for a few months. She didn’t get it checked immediately because she felt that she could function OK and because she was waiting for health coverage to kick in. She finally got it checked out a week ago, and apparently it’s serious. The macula (the part of the retina that focuses) is not working correctly, which pretty much means she has permanently lost at least a portion of her vision in that eye; the eye specialist said that the blood vessels behind it appeared to be leaking, and he couldn’t tell why. She has to go to more specialists to find out what’s going on. It’s very mysterious; degeneration of the macula is something that happens to elderly people, not usually to 23 year olds.

She seems to be taking it pretty much in stride, but it is hard to tell over the phone. I feel terrible that she’s so far away and I don’t know how to support her, especially when there are so many unknowns (what’s causing the leaking blood vessels? Is it going to get worse?).

Those of you who pray, she could really use your prayers right now – those of you who don’t, please send her good thoughts if you get a moment.

I have been doing pretty well with this up until now, but something has come up that has me pretty bummed. A woman in a volunteer position that is part of the project I’ve been working on for a year has “flipped out” again and complained (rather unprofessionally) to the state agency overseeing the project. It’s one of those things that reflects badly on everyone involved – she looks like an unprofessional wench for not going through the proper channels, the supervisor looks like he’s disinterested and uninvolved, and we (as the project supervisors) look completely uninformed and ineffective.

This is the second time this has happened – after the first time it happened, I was fairly confident that her supervisor had ideas in place that would help. I’m not her direct supervisor, and HER supervisor has been a project supervisor before (as well as running a huge non-profit), so I didn’t think I would have to check up on him. Argh. Anyway, he is pissed at the volunteer because instead of complaining to him, she went and bitched to the state agency again. She didn’t come to us as project supervisors, either; if she had done so, we might have been able to improve things. All of this is happening exactly one month before she is DONE with that volunteer position, so it’s not like there is a ton of time to fix things now.

Oh, it sucks. It’s a mess. Again, I’m not her direct supervisor and I have another volunteer that I’m responsible for, plus I’ve never supervised anyone in my life except violin students. So I really don’t know what I could have done, and likely it’s just that her direct supervisor made a bad decision in hiring her in the first place. But I keep feeling like there’s something I could have done to improve things. I don’t know what. I gave the volunteer my contact info and told her she should contact me with whatever questions or concerns she had, but she obviously hasn’t taken advantage of that. Ugh. Maybe there’s nothing I could’ve done, but it’s an ugly thing and it seems like not much positive stuff could come from it.

So I found a book by Dr. Albert Ellis called How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable. I picked it up after reading an interview with Dr. Ellis. I’ve been wanting to look into cognitive therapy for awhile. I don’t feel that I need a therapist, but I do feel that my anxiety and perfectionism have a negative effect on my life, enough that it would be worth improving. I’m not sure I buy this whole program hook line and sinker, but so far I’ve definitely found some practical ways of “reprogramming” my monkey brain that tends to leap on the worst case scenario constantly. This tendency is at the root of most of my negativity. We’ll see what comes of this. I don’t want to go around repeating pat affirmations, but I’d like to be more rational in the way I react to the good and the bad.

...I find myself dancing crazily around the living room. Maybe it was the 2 cups of tea (instead of 1; I’m awfully sensitive to caffeine). Maybe it was the joy of a 3-day weekend. Anyway, despite the sad stuff going on, I danced around and made a total fool of myself. It was fun. And ever since then, I’ve felt just a bit better.

What with hurricane footage – crap coming out of politicians’ mouths – the realization that this all could have been handled better – the realization that it’s all going to get much worse before it gets better….

And this morning, an email from a close friend I haven’t spoken to in quite awhile. Her boyfriend just died suddenly of a severe asthma attack. WHY? He was such a beautiful and upbeat person, and now he’s gone. I want to call her, but I don’t know what to say. I feel raw, but also ashamed of that, because it’s so small compared to what she must be feeling now.

Hard to put a positive spin on all of that.