Everyone has an "off day" during which a series of unfortunate events seem to follow them like a shadow.
And some of us have "off months", "off years", "off decades", perhaps even entire lives of "off-ness"...
Last night I'd convinced myself that I must be one of those people who is destined to an "off life".
Clearly, I can be a bit of a drama queen when I'm down in the dumps.
My dreariness still greeted me this morning and stayed with me until I took a moment to review yesterday's series of unfortunate events.
I'd left for the day job thinking I'd be about five minutes late getting there.
Well, after three hours of being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic I was only halfway to my destination, running out of gas and one of the tires was low...so I decided to nix going to the day job and simply pull into Whole Foods where I'd hang out for a bit.
<Whole Foods, BTW, is such a great place to go when you need to shop whilst calming your nerves.
It's not like other Grocery Stores. The people who shop and work at Whole Foods actually seem friendly - even normal! And the entire store smells like lavender. I just love it... >
The whole reason I got stuck in the worse part of the bumper to bumper traffic was because I'd seen a traffic jam on my usual route and after being stuck in the creepy-crawl for 20 minutes, decided to seek out an alternative route that I thought no one else would use.
Boy was I wrong.
Apparently, everyone and their second cousin had sought out the one alternative route that everyone assumed no one else would think to use.
So this morning, I started comparing yesterday's traffic jam to my life.
Like most INFP's, I hate following crowds.
That feeling of being one of the masses, a cow in the massive herd of cattle, makes me absolutely nauseous.
It's not that I think I'm better or even worse than anyone around me, I just like being different.
So, here I sit, wanting to be creative and different yet I spend 8 to 10 hours of my everyday sitting as a drone in an office where I file paperwork like the hundreds of other drones in the same office.
Most days, it takes a lot of willpower to not crumple into the fetal position as I stare out of the window overlooking my fake wooden desk and wish I was outside filming or writing something of importance.
When I start to feel like a part of the herd, my initial reaction is to panic and flee the scene in any way I can.
That's what I did in the traffic jam yesterday.
I found a different street and just took it- but it turned out to be even worse than the first street I'd been on.
Well, it's the same with my day job.
When an idea for a story grabs me by the throat, instead of being able to write the story, I'm stuck at my day job, answering phone calls about things I have no interest in. This makes me horribly sad because all I want to do is write and then it makes me panicky.
I scour Craig's List for other jobs, finding nothing but misspelled ads for "pretty ladies", and decide to forget Craig's List and create my own business. So I make a website for the first business venture that pops into my head, and I start sketching out a fear-induced business plan for something that I only half-believe in but feel I must do in order to escape the beige office I've gotten myself stuck in.
In retrospect, that's kind of crazy.
Instead of panicking and taking every wrong street possible, maybe I need to calm down and come up with a solid solution to how I can get out of this "traffic jam" of unfulfilling day jobs and do what I love to do.
When you love to write but you need to pay your bills (and unfortunately you didn't come into the world with a trust fund), what do you do?
And some of us have "off months", "off years", "off decades", perhaps even entire lives of "off-ness"...
Last night I'd convinced myself that I must be one of those people who is destined to an "off life".
Clearly, I can be a bit of a drama queen when I'm down in the dumps.
My dreariness still greeted me this morning and stayed with me until I took a moment to review yesterday's series of unfortunate events.
I'd left for the day job thinking I'd be about five minutes late getting there.
Well, after three hours of being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic I was only halfway to my destination, running out of gas and one of the tires was low...so I decided to nix going to the day job and simply pull into Whole Foods where I'd hang out for a bit.
<Whole Foods, BTW, is such a great place to go when you need to shop whilst calming your nerves.
It's not like other Grocery Stores. The people who shop and work at Whole Foods actually seem friendly - even normal! And the entire store smells like lavender. I just love it... >
The whole reason I got stuck in the worse part of the bumper to bumper traffic was because I'd seen a traffic jam on my usual route and after being stuck in the creepy-crawl for 20 minutes, decided to seek out an alternative route that I thought no one else would use.
Boy was I wrong.
Apparently, everyone and their second cousin had sought out the one alternative route that everyone assumed no one else would think to use.
So this morning, I started comparing yesterday's traffic jam to my life.
Like most INFP's, I hate following crowds.
That feeling of being one of the masses, a cow in the massive herd of cattle, makes me absolutely nauseous.
It's not that I think I'm better or even worse than anyone around me, I just like being different.
So, here I sit, wanting to be creative and different yet I spend 8 to 10 hours of my everyday sitting as a drone in an office where I file paperwork like the hundreds of other drones in the same office.
Most days, it takes a lot of willpower to not crumple into the fetal position as I stare out of the window overlooking my fake wooden desk and wish I was outside filming or writing something of importance.
When I start to feel like a part of the herd, my initial reaction is to panic and flee the scene in any way I can.
That's what I did in the traffic jam yesterday.
I found a different street and just took it- but it turned out to be even worse than the first street I'd been on.
Well, it's the same with my day job.
When an idea for a story grabs me by the throat, instead of being able to write the story, I'm stuck at my day job, answering phone calls about things I have no interest in. This makes me horribly sad because all I want to do is write and then it makes me panicky.
I scour Craig's List for other jobs, finding nothing but misspelled ads for "pretty ladies", and decide to forget Craig's List and create my own business. So I make a website for the first business venture that pops into my head, and I start sketching out a fear-induced business plan for something that I only half-believe in but feel I must do in order to escape the beige office I've gotten myself stuck in.
In retrospect, that's kind of crazy.
Instead of panicking and taking every wrong street possible, maybe I need to calm down and come up with a solid solution to how I can get out of this "traffic jam" of unfulfilling day jobs and do what I love to do.
When you love to write but you need to pay your bills (and unfortunately you didn't come into the world with a trust fund), what do you do?
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