WC092723: How I shake off a bad mood.

 

Today's challenge is how I shake off a bad mood.

  

Dr. Gray mentions that when men have a problem that they are having a hard time solving they go into their cave, and that a woman needs to leave them alone until they've solved the problem.

My wife calls it getting moody and brooding.

I have a hard time sleeping when something is bugging me, which really bugs my wife as I get up and go into another room so she can sleep, but somehow this doesn't help her sleep.

Fixating on it can be self-defeating, the more you think about it the fewer options you have come up with to solve it. This is where Archimedes comes in. He had a problem and couldn't sleep so his wife told to take a bath. When he got into the bath and he saw the water rise from displacing his mass, that was the problem he was working on and it solved the problem and he left the bathtub and ran naked across Syracuse yelling "Eureka, Eureka" (I found it.) 

I usually can't sleep because my mind is fixated on the problem, so I listen to an audiobook, that way I can stay in bed and not disturb my wife. Hearing aids are hooked up to my phone.

During the day and I'm still brooding on the problem I turn to comedy. If you start laughing problems seem to melt, get put into perspective and a solution comes, or I accept it and move on.

I had a particularly bad principal one year who was on my case and my blood pressure was rising. I was wondering if I would be standing on a streetcorner with a sign "Will Teach For Food."

We went to see The Addams Family, which kind of dates this problem and when we left the theater I told my wife, "I needed that." It lifted the burden I was carrying off my shoulders. 

The next day in the teacher's lounge a special ed teacher told me, "She's temporary, you're permanent." That helped too.

When the principal finished my evaluation, she mentioned I wasn't working with the students. Shorthand for outside the classroom. I told her I was sponsor the Rodeo club and Youth and Government. She backed off but was left with a pissed off teacher. Oh, how good it is to be retired.

When problems arise, we have the complete Becker with Ted Danson on DVD, and we sit and laugh. There's The Fifth Element, which we just say Big Badda Boom, and know it's time to watch and escape for a few hours.

An earlier post I mentioned the problems I've been having getting a doctor's appointment for the last six months. When I got the call with a date and time, even though it's another six months away, again a burden was lifted. Sometimes the problems don't get fixed right away. I found ways to relieve the stress in that time with various coping mechanisms.