Tag Archives: attitude

It’s Nice When Things Turn Around (or Having A Better Day Helps So Much)

With having such a horrible day earlier this week, I was prepared for having some tough days the rest of this week. And things haven’t gotten completely better and I’m still struggling a bit, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was. And while I would love for things to be perfect and amazing, that’s not realistic. So I’m happy with the few changes that have happened in only a day or two.

I’m still dealing a lot with the heat and all the issues that I have from that. But I’ve been focusing on staying as hydrated as I can since I know that can help when I feel overheated. I do still have to be careful because I can drink too much water, but I know I can be ok drinking a little bit more than normal since I’m also sweating more than normal. And while my a/c unit isn’t perfect, I know it makes a huge difference and if I feel really sick from the heat I can take a little break and stand right in front of it. Again, it’s not perfect but it helps and makes me feel better for a while.

I’m also still dealing with pain and nausea, but the first few days of the week were the worst and now things are getting easier each day. My medications are helping a lot and that’s a huge relief. I also know I’m past the halfway point of what is usually the length of time I deal with this. And knowing I’m almost done makes the really tough moments easier because I know I’m almost done. And while I would have loved to have things to distract me so I wouldn’t always focus on how I feel, I’m glad I had nowhere to go because I spent a lot of time laying on my couch or bed just trying to feel better. And I had the ability to do that after work and not miss out on things I was looking forward to.

And even though this wasn’t something that was upsetting me earlier this week, I did get my new contract for my job sent to me. I knew it was coming, even if it was only for 6 months and not a year (hopefully the extension will come soon). But waiting still made me nervous and afraid that I would hear that something happened and they couldn’t offer me a contract. But I have it now, it’s all signed and done, and I know how many hours I’ll have for the rest of the year. It’s close to what I thought it would be and I’ll be doing some training on my new tasks next week so I can start doing that and not just the social media work I’ve been doing the past few weeks.

But honestly, I think one of the things that helped me get over my bad day was to allow myself to have a bad day. I didn’t pretend that things were fine and if I ignored it that I would believe it. I allowed myself to be upset and do what I needed to do to get through the day. Laying in bed isn’t the best way to spend my time, but it’s what I needed to do. I didn’t stress too much about anything I didn’t have to do. And just getting through the day was helpful and didn’t make me feel bad about what I was able to do or not do that day.

Even though I’m not totally better now, I think the little improvements I’ve had are helping me feel better. I still have things to deal with and push through, but they are more tolerable now. And having one or two horrible days and then being almost better is a nicer situation than to have a week of somewhat bad days before things turning around. And I’m grateful that this time they were horrible days but they were over quickly.

Unexpected Problems (or This Is Why I’m Glad I Rent)

Again, this is not a blog I expected to write. But things happen in life that make you think about how you react to them and this is one of those situations.

It’s the middle of another heat wave here in LA, and I’m definitely cranky again. It’s a combination of the heat, lack of sleep, and bad nutrition (because I know I’m making bad food choices while it’s triple digits here).

So I wasn’t in the best mood yesterday morning when an employee from the gas company came to my door to let me know that they had to turn off my gas. What he told me was a pipe was old and it cracked. Later, I found out that the gas company was attaching a new meter and they cracked a pipe. And it was just over the boundary that makes it my (or my landlord’s) responsibility and not the gas company’s responsibility.

Of course this happened before I had a chance to take a shower in the morning. And while a cold shower does sound refreshing, I prefer it to be cool with a bit of warm water. Not ice cold. There was no way to get the gas turned back on until the pipe was repaired and the gas company man left me with some paperwork explaining what needs to happen next as well as a citation saying what needs to be fixed.

Fortunately, I was working from home with my recruiting job until 2pm yesterday so I was able to call my landlord and leave a voicemail saying that this needed to be fixed ASAP. And since sometimes they don’t get my messages, I also emailed him.

This is where my attitude could have been adjusted. I was so mad that I got a voicemail for my landlord. The house I live in now is the first place I’ve lived where I didn’t have on-site management. I’m not used to being able to reach people immediately to fix things. I tried calling my landlord every 30 minutes until I got through to someone. Finally, I got through and they said that they were sending the plumber to fix things.

I really didn’t have patience yesterday for any of this. I know that I wasn’t a pleasant person to deal with, and I regret that I didn’t take a breath and try to deal with things with a better attitude.

Right before I had to leave for day job #2 in the box office (where I’m so happy they have air conditioning), the plumber as well as my landlord got to my place. They promised that it would be fixed by the time I got home from work, so I left and they worked on it.

While I was at work, I called the gas company to figure out how to get the gas turned back on, and the gas company was at my door a few minutes after I walked in.

I’m glad that somehow this all got done in a day. I really wasn’t that inconvenienced even though it felt that way. And I’m super happy that I didn’t have to pay for any of the repairs done to the gas line. I don’t have that type of money to spare and if I had to pay for it myself, I don’t know what I would have done.

Hopefully, this type of situation won’t happen again in the future, but if it does, I’m really going to work on my patience and having a better attitude about it. Having a nasty attitude really didn’t help anything get done quicker and it made my day kind of stink.

Acting Like A Duck (or Reminding Myself That Positivity Is Important)

I know I’ve had a pretty bad attitude for the past week. A lot of that has to do with being sick. I’m a big baby when I get sick like that and I definitely get into a funk. I’m almost better now, but I’m still taking some decongestants at nighttime so I can get as much sleep as possible (I’m waking up in the middle of the night out of breath because I close my mouth and try to breathe through my nose).

But this week, I’m trying to get back into the positive mindset that I want to be in. Even though my work situation is still pretty bad, I’m going to keep my head down and ignore the names my co-worker calls me throughout the day. My boss has said that the next time he hears her call me a name she’ll be fired. But my co-worker now calls me names quietly so he doesn’t hear her. And yes, I’ve thought about running a tape recorder the entire shift hoping to catch her, but when I’ve tried that in the past it didn’t pick it up.

New job prospects keep coming my way. I’ve now done 3 phone interviews for 3 different jobs. 1 job has had me do a writing test and I’m still waiting to hear if I made it to the next step. Another job has also had me do a writing test and I’ve made it to the next round, but they don’t know exactly when they will be getting to that. And I’m taking time every day to apply for more jobs so that in the near future, I can be working somewhere where I am respected and not verbally harassed during my shift.

And while I’m still dealing with a little guilt about not being near my mom while she goes through her chemo treatments, I can’t do anything about that either, so I need to get past that feeling. I talk to my mom pretty much every day, so I’m being there as much as I can. And I will see my dad this upcoming weekend so I can be supportive for him too.

And finally, the thing that really turned around my bad mood into a good mood was the 5K that I did yesterday. I will do a full recap tomorrow, but I’m beyond excited that even though the race had the killer hill, I did another 5K in under an hour!

So while sometimes it seems like everything is keeping me down, if I stay down and work hard, all that negative stuff just runs off my back and the positive stuff stays with me!