Yesterday I woke up pissed off. And as the day progressed my mood worsened. Blame it on the insensitivity of people in this world, blame it on my lack of sleep, blame it on the fact the holidays sometimes get me down, blame it on the fact I haven’t been getting to exercise as much as I have wanted to lately. Regardless, the tone of my day was set as soon as I woke up.
I felt like no matter what the day brought me, nothing was going to make my mood any better. Sadly, on days like this, I often wish my day away so that I can wake up hopefully in a better mood the next day. Life is too damn short to be wishing it away. I need to do something about it but being stuck at the office all day, I knew there wasn’t much I could really do to improve my situation while there.
My son was going to be with me that evening and the last thing I wanted to do was subject him to my grumpiness. I needed to come up with a solution before I got home. I had to look at some of the reasons I was initially blaming for this bad mood. I can’t really change the fact that I have had to deal with insensitive people in this world. Although, I could just choose to ignore them. I can’t take a nap at work, so sleep would have to fix itself that night. The holidays aren’t going anywhere fast, so again, just ignore that as much as I can. So the only fix that seemed to be viable was the exercise.
After a few minutes of pondering, I knew that if I really put my mind into it, I could fit in some time to exercise that evening while my son was playing a game on his tablet. I could throw in an exercise dvd that I had and sweat away the grump. I know in the past, exercise has always lifted my spirits when down in the dumps, so I knew it would probably help in this case. Even just planning the exercise time made me feel slightly better.
Being overly tired when I got home, I was almost happy to wallow in my grumpiness instead of working out but that wasn’t the example I wanted to set for my son. So I got him set up to play and I got the dvd player going. My mood started to lift almost instantly. That, and the fact my son was laughing at me made me laugh too.
By the end I was in a completely different frame of mind for the rest of our evening together. I need to remind myself that as much as some days I really hate the thought of working out, I need it. My body needs it and my mental health needs it. When something as simple as a short workout can greatly improve my mood, there is no need to go thru life grumpy.
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