Moody & Photos

I've been a bit down lately.  I think part of my problem is that I work in a challenging environment with women who act like the mean girls I went to Jr. High with.  While I always try to take the high road and treat everyone with kindness and respect, it does get wearing to have to deal with the drama day in and day out.  This is on top of still feeling sad about my dad's death from this spring, and having to always be "on" with my son to help him with all of his issues.  So lately I've been extremely fatigued and I've had a difficult time with looking on the sunny side of things.

Since I don't want to wallow in sadness (borderline depression?), I thought I'd try to focus on some good things and share those.  This morning when I went on my walk/jog, I saw an owl up close and personal.  He was sitting on a street light and as I got close he opened his enormous wings and glided up to a nearby rooftop where he watched me go by.  He was a light tawny color, huge, and simply magnificent.  Then when I got to work I glanced out my window and saw this rainbow.  The picture doesn't really do it justice as it was very bright, but it's hard to capture that through a tinted high-rise window.

I've also been trying to work on smiling and laughing.  I remember from my physiological psychology class (one of my favorites, next to statistics, back in college) learning about the research that we often think of mood backwards.  We think we smile when we're happy, but it can actually make us feel happy if we just make the effort to smile.  So I've been trying to find reasons to smile and see if that helps me to feel better.  I've also decided that it's time to start trying meditation in earnest.  I downloaded a guided meditation app, and I'm going to start using it at breaks at work when I can feel my stress levels rising.

My kids started piano lessons back up for the fall tonight, and I got to take a walk with them one at a time while the other was in lessons.  We saw some beautiful flowers and sights, including a leaf which is starting to turn red.  It won't be long now before autumn really comes to stay.