Last Wednesday
Last Wednesday
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When I wake last Wednesday I am tired. I am tired because I spent three very busy days in Seville with my family. It was hot and we walked a lot so I am basically exhausted and very dehydrated. Thus, I start the day from a place of anxiousness. I am low on serotonin and am at risk of chasing cheap dopamine to fill the gaps.
This is important to register because it means I am more likely to spend time on social media, see what other people are doing, compare myself, feel bad, and run in this circle until I am distracted by something else. So, the first goal of the day is to limit using my phone a much as I can.
Taking three days off means I have a lot of emails to catch up on. This is work I hate doing. So I procrastinate. I make a tiktok, record a poem, write two poems, reply to a few emails that could lead to exciting things. Then I get a bad email. Well, really it’s just an email. I have decided it is bad. An opportunity I wanted did not come to pass. Which makes me sad and triggers an overreaction from a rejection-sensitive mind. I begin to catastrophize. I begin to worry about everything I hope to happen. My novel will now never be published. I will not make it as an artist. I am failing.
All these thoughts stemming from one email where things have not gone my way.
This tells me it’s time to take a break. I stand for breakfast. I have breakfast. Then it’s time for my car’s NCT. My car fails its NCT. We’re both devastated because it’s highly inconvenient.
When I get home I have a new email. I have been rejected from the Poetry Ireland Review (again). then another email. I have been rejected from Arts Council Funding (again). It is quickly becoming not a good day.
Within the same timeframe as all f this I receive several DMs from people complimenting my work. My girlfriend makes me laugh. I have nice coffee. I have nice food. I am not being attacked. I am safe.
My point? We have bad days. But they’re rarely all bad. There are good moments in shit days. There are things that can explain why we feel bad, and there are other things that can help us to feel better. I’m trying not to write an entire day off as a disaster because of a few particularly less-than-ideal moments within them. We do not work in the binary, we work in the discrete.
So last Wednesday wasn’t amazing, but we won’t let it set the tone for the rest of time.