Things Could Be Worse

And no, I'm not being glib. Although I can get into moods, I am always somewhat buffeted by the notion that things could always be worse, and in truth, things are not all that bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm still in a pretty foul mood, but it's tempered (this is because I'm a 9 on the enneagram really, but that's a digression). I think about people in places like Afghanistan or Iraq or North Korea. Normal people who had normal lives who now live in a shithole if they're even alive at all. I am solidly middle class, and while I've struggled in my life, I've never really struggled that much. I've never honestly not known how I was going to eat next or pay my rent. I am lucky that this has never been my lot in life. What has me down? Relationships, professional achievement, family obligations, personal appearance. Pretty trifling things frankly. I understand that they take up a lot of my mental time and energy, but it's because the rest of my life is so bang on track and good that I even have the capacity to spend so much time brooding over such things. I should spend more time thinking about when B&C are finally going to pop out their rugrat who seems to be taking forever (at least, far longer than I would have put money on), about a conference I managed to wrangle out of my office that I'm going to next week, about how I have passed three exams already and have almost two months to study and I am actually intelligent and will learn this stuff if it kills me and then I'll be 5/9 an architect as opposed to 1/3. I should think about how I'm lucky to have bought a place and each month I pay my mortgage and get rent from D is improving my long-term goals. And I should be happy that I've had all the experiences that I have had in my life and not take them all for granted so much because although I've worked for the things I've achieved, I've been lucky enough to have been in a starting position to work for them to begin with.

This is my general format for getting myself out of bad moods.