A little fragile
I've been a little frayed lately, a little more likely than usual to react badly to small inconveniences or annoyances, a little more tense and a little more easily distressed than usual.
I suspect it has a lot to do with the upcoming fifth anniversary of my father's murder, just under a month from now. But it's probably also winter blahs (cue mocking hollow laughs from the East Coasterners who are digging themselves out from under a vast shroud of snow), and world situations, and the number of people I know who are going through various kinds of very hard times. (I've been trying for a couple weeks to find a way to say that without saying "Give me sympathy for all the hardships that my friends are dealing with!" When of course the sympathies are instead due to the people actually experiencing the hardships.)
There've certainly been good things going on in my life too. Reconnecting with some old friends and friendly acquaintances; finally managing to cope with several things that've been hanging over my head waiting for me to deal with them for far too long (though there are still many more items in that category); being more productive at work than I've been in a while (as of this evening, I'm within angstroms of finishing two projects that have been asymptotically approaching done for months); finding time to do pleasure reading again, after a long drought.
And positive-focused websites continue to cheer me up, especially Epic Win FTW and GivesMeHope. (I imagine a fair number of the items at the latter site are fictional, but I like it anyway.)
Also entertaining tweets and text messages and Facebook posts from friends, one of which arrived this afternoon at the precise right moment to cheer me up.
And occasional moments of sunshine amid the long dreary gray-and-rainy spell we've been having lately. (Cue second round of mocking laughter from snowbound folks.)
So in any objective sense, it's ridiculous that I started quoting Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day to myself this afternoon, after yet another extremely minor but disproportionately annoying thing happened. (My problems today were all rich-people problems ("My veggie burger was still cold when the server handed it to me!"), and all minor, but boy were there a lot of them.) I keep telling myself "Yeah, yeah, you can come back and complain when you've got some real problems."
Still. My point in all this is that I'm not coping as well as would be ideal. And that'll probably continue to be true much of the time for the next month or so. So . . . if possible, be patient with me.
