For reasons not immediately clear to me, I’m in the midst of a mood swing. The day started off well enough, so as a little exercise I’m going to bang on this keyboard and see if I can figure out what’s what.
Mood music:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYUm5T8uQIY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
I woke up at 4 a.m. tired but happy. I was out late last night at one of the planning meetings for a weekend Catholic retreat I’m on team for next month and I was assigned a cool talk to give during that weekend. The coffee was good and strong and I got to work ahead of the traffic and thunderstorms.
I talked to my OA sponsor and talked to one of the guys I sponsor (another sponsee was late calling and I never got a chance to call him back). I wrote a blog entry and plunged into work. Good day so far. I was especially glad to be writing something, since I’ve been doing a lot more editing and planning than writing these last two weeks. I’m always happier when writing articles.
I think the spark for the mood swing happened during the writing of that article. It’s for a three-part series and while I have a crystal-clear idea of where I’m going with parts 2 and 3, I hit a wall writing the first one. I didn’t have as clear a sense of where I was going and it slowed me down. So instead of writing all three articles, I only got through one.
Ridiculous, you say? True, three write-ups in one day is a lot to expect and most people are happy to finish one. But writing multiple items in a day is something I do all the time. I wouldn’t care as much if not for a burning desire to get the series off my plate before heading to New York for a conference Sunday.
The second spark, I think, is that my editor hadn’t gotten to reading my story by the time I left and I had high hopes of posting it this afternoon. This is also me being ridiculous, because it is not time-sensitive stuff. But I am a control freak and when my work is in someone else’s queue I have no control. That stuff I wrote this morning about learning to surrender? Sometimes I suck at following my own wisdom.
So I guess I know what my problem is now. I don’t feel like I was productive in my work today, and I thrive on being productive.
That’s a sucky feeling. 
But it’s too bad. I know I just have to get over it and move on.
Tomorrow is the chance to do better. Tonight I’ll just move on.
I also could have gone on a binge like I used to when feeling unfulfilled at the end of a day. But I didn’t.
There. I feel better already.
Emotions (moods) come from our thoughts, not from our circumstances. Some irrational negative thought about yourself (If I don’t achieve I’m worthless and I’ll be rejected, for instance) might have been unearthed by an outside circumstance (editor didn’t return call so online publication delayed) with the result of bumming you out.
So, the only solution may be to challenge the irrational negative thought before the bad mood takes hold. And taking action (as you did with this blog post) is a great way of nipping such things in the bud. Victory!