Boo

[ladysprite]

It's Thursday, halfway through the day, and it already feels like this week has been going on for about 13 days, and will last another ten. I'm not quite sure why - nothing demonstrably, measurably horrible has happened. Work has been busy but not miserable, I'm overscheduled at home but not to the point of insanity, the weather is gray but not doom-laden, and yet I still feel like I'm spending my days slogging through a waist-deep ocean of the Molasses of Maudlin Misery.

Nothing is going quite right. I tried to donate blood yesterday and was deferred - again - for mild anemia. I made pecan shortbread last night, and it crumbled as I took it out of the pan. Still edible, but not pretty. I can't find the liquid pectin I need to make blueberry jellies anywhere. I have to skip dance class tonight in order to get baking done. Another doctor at one of the clinics I do relief work at didn't follow up on one of my cases, and now there are... hiccups. Plans with friends keep getting cancelled or postponed or just falling apart. I bought a new phone, and the store sent me home with the wrong charger.

I feel so petty whining about such little things, but right now they're all adding up to leave me in a place where I feel like nothing in the world can go right. I know that's not true, but even when I try to make a list of things that are going well, as much as I know they exist, I can't think of them.

I need to force-reboot my perspective on the world. I just have to figure out how.....

Comments

[denimskater.livejournal.com]

... go dancing at Sin-O-Matic Saturday night?

But then of course I'd say that. ;-)

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I've been having kind of a blah week, myself. End of vacation and, for some reason, end of relationship stuff coming back up. At least I've got good weather and got to ride the motorcycle to work today.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

::hugs::

Little things add up and can get as bad as big things. You're not being whiny, from my POV...

[lorebubeck.livejournal.com]

Mercury in retrograde again...

[gmkieran.livejournal.com]

nermal, eat your heart out! http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/funny-pictures-kitten-is-too-cute.jpg

*hugs*

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Trying to figure out how to reboot perspective is *really* hard. This is what made me start thinking about my chronic depression as a disability, rather than just "a problem".

One thing that helps some folks is meditation. Take some time in which you try to step back from life and living, and just relax. Focus on your breath, or try to concentrate on some nonsense task (I like to imagine stacking blocks - four in a row, then four rows, then four layers, so I end up with a 4x4x4 stack of blocks, and then starting over - but I did this during exercise when I was breathing hard, each breath a block). The important thing is to try to focus your mind. You don't want to nap - you want to meditate. But you want to learn to focus on something that merely engages your mind, and helps it pull away from day to day stresses.

Another thing that helps is something that's related to meditation. Try stepping back from each bad thought/feeling and analyzing it. You feel bad that your pecan shortbread crumbled - why?

Maybe it's just a bad feeling on a bad day, and you're frustrated and, hey, you know, shortbread often crumbles under X circumstances - no wonder it's crumbling.

Or, maybe you have a hard time making non-crumbly shortbread and it's a sign that you still haven't mastered it, and that bugs you.

Or maybe it's the *one thing* you were counting on today to go right, and it didn't.

What you find when you analyze isn't quite as important as the analysis itself. You end up putting it in proper perspective, rather than letting your brain run away with it ("it crumbled, and it's just like everything else in my life, it's all falling apart and everything's awful..."). Because brains do that. A minor rejection - say, a friend canceling lunch plans - triggers memories of other rejections, and if you don't lasso it into perspective, it can make you feel woefully abandoned instead of mildly disappointed.

And it lets you figure out what to do next. Do you just want another pan of hopefully non-crumbly shortbread? Do you want to find out more about why it crumbles? Do you want to enjoy it, crumbly or not, because by-golly this was going to be a nice treat for you today?

[qarylla.livejournal.com]

This won't be helpful at all, but oooh blueberry jellies?

Are you talking about blueberry preserves (jam or jelly) or something much more like blueberry gum drops.

I have instructions for 'pate de fruit' I found online and it works with dry pectin if you want to try that instead (and I have extra pectin if you want to experiment sans cost).

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

They're not preserves; they're little individual jelly candies - not quite as stiff as gumdrops; more like fruit gems, if you've ever had them.

(At least they're supposed to be. We'll see tomorrow morning.)

The recipe specifically called for the liquid stuff, which we ultimately found at the local Stop & Shop, of all places.....

[qarylla.livejournal.com]

Ah, the recipe I use is from the Canelle et Vanille blog and they aren't stiff. While the recipe uses a strawberry puree, I have made them with canned pumpkin, apple cider and spices with regular dry pectin (she buys yellow pectin). They work really well.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Hope the rest of the week is better. I found the pectin on Amazon, if that helps.