Become ridiculously positive.

I have difficulty with things like this, which aren’t really quantifiable.

I’ll say I’ve stepped over the fuzzy line not because I walk around with a permanent smile making everyone sick to their stomachs with sunshine and rainbows, but because I find that I don’t dwell so much on the negative anymore. Even temporarily panic-inducing bad situations aren’t panic-inducing for long, and I find that I am more quickly able to think logically and solve my problems more effectively.

I feel like I play a game with myself now, particularly when I work at the fabric store: if I can be calm all day, and super-nice to everyone and not lose control or blow my cool or say or do anything out of frustration, I’ve won.

The other day I was closing after a thirteen hour shift, and Chelsea, one of the teenaged cashiers was helping me, complaining about something, and from my reactions, she eventually just stopped dead and asked “You’ve been here since we opened—how can you just be so insert happy sighing noise here about everything?”

So I told her “I found out a long time ago that there are some things that aren’t worth getting upset about.”

Really, I’m on a mission to be the calmest person I know. Joanne, the girl who is lazy that I don’t like, has frequent outbursts when she’s cleaning up—she whines and mutters so angrily, like she takes it so personally that customers make a huge mess of the store.

Hello? Most people are assholes, whether they mean to be or not. It’s nothing personal, and you ranting about them being assholes isn’t helping the cleanup go any faster, and it’s certainly not benefitting you, and it’s damnwell not benefitting me.

How does being in a shitty mood without good reason benefit anybody?

Right. It doesn’t. I’m finished with that kind of crap. And it felt great when Chelsea asked me how I did it. I wish I could have had this kind of attitude when I was younger-it would have saved me a lot of needless bitchery and perhaps have made me a more tolerable person. Taking this kind of attitude makes me feel way more capable of getting through the day-I feel better at the end of the night, and sometimes all you need is one person reacting positively to get other people into that mindset.

Really, now. I’m tired of one moody person dragging me down. Or one very negative customer ruining my shift. I want the ability to let everything slide off, and go on doing what I do happily, cleanly.

That’s it. I want to be cleaner, mentally and emotionally. I hate it when thoughtlessly negative people try to gunk up my day.

Example: a few days ago, I was working at the fabric store, wearing a couple of bright, happy pink and yellow feather hair clips I’d made. They make me happy and tend to be a big hit with people. A lady in my line remarked somewhat nastily that she’d never seen hair clips like that before. I told her I’d made them myself to match my hair when it was dyed yellow and pink. She shook her head and commented that she would think someone of my age would have grown out of that sort of thing by now (this was after she’d mistaken me for a teenager and I’d set her straight). I didn’t flinch. I acted just as though she’d complemented me, cut her fabric and wished her a pleasant day.

The ladies in line behind her told me they thought I was lovely and that I seemed like a very happy person. I think that in itself made my day.