Picking myself back up

Well... The past two days have not gone as smoothly as the previous two.  Someone said one thing, and it brought me way down - on the edge of tears if I needed to explain myself for the rest of the evening.  And then there was this low-level depression for most of today.  I really didn't have it in me to play or be spontaneous in any way.  (Well, I did spell out "Hi" with knives on the counter in the kitchen of my office and left it there yesterday for someone to discover - a bit random, but it's all I could muster :)

I'm not usually prone to depression, but every now and then it does happen - always situational.  I can see in my thinking what is contributing to it - worries that I won't be able to keep myself afloat financially after my job ends and that I will never find the man I'm looking for, as well as missing the man I was dating (which I mentioned in my first post).  The thing that turned it around for me this evening was cleaning.

I used to have a cleaning business and when I was doing it full-time - although the benefits were that it was meditative and allowed me time to process life - after a while I started to really dislike it.  That's not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life!  So, I went to graduate school, and my life transformed.  The pain of what I was experiencing motivated me to make a change, just as it is now with this whole experiment.

Anyway, back to cleaning tonight...  I think that part of what turned around my mood while doing this is the physical activity involved.  I also consciously tried to change my thinking.  I thought, "Well, there are a lot of benefits to being single" and started focusing upon those.  These include:

• Being able to go out and do what you want without answering to anyone (except, of course, when I have my kids).
• Being able to sprawl out in bed and staying up as late as I want.
• I get a lot of work done! (And right now, I really need to do that - having a full-time job, a few side jobs, maintaining my house, and job searching, as well as all of the other activities my kids and I are involved with).
• It allows me to focus more on my kids and my own self-improvement
• It's allowing me to get this project going - and thus (re)learn how to depend upon myself for my well-being and happiness.
• It's allowing me to connect more with a wider-range of friends and community that I wouldn't have otherwise and feel their love and support.

These are all pretty good things!

Beyond thinking about the benefits, I also started thinking that I just haven't found that person yet, and he will come, and I should enjoy what I have right now.  Same thing with the job situation.  When it seems that things are not falling into place, it's just that things are not right now, and something needs to change, so keep trying new things.  My play experiment seems right on target.

So, I haven't gotten back to the level of play yet, but the day is still not over!  Although I did come across this picture which inspired me :)