Gnarly Grumblies

Today’s moment of happy provided quite the stretch.  It seemed insurmountable.  The summit of this task proved daunting.  How was I ever to make the happiness happen when I slept for less than four hours and I had to return to work after a vacation?  Yet—it happened.

Here I thought my title was clever.  Then this image came up in a search for "grumblies." *sigh  Great pic right?

Granted if not for a healthy dose of coffee the gnarly grumblies might have bested me.  However, I did indeed find a way to persevere.

I made a Top Ten List of reasons why I was glad to be back at work.  It included items like “another chance to be my best” and “no Mayan apocalypse.”  Then I did a little writing about an awesome event from the break followed by either a funny, unfortunate, or embarrassing event.  Each time a group did this activity at work today, I shared a different set of events from my own break.  I even made myself think of more awesome details when people asked how my vacation was.  Once my drowsy cobwebs cleared and I had two hours back in action, I admit—it definitely felt better than draggin’ my heels and wallowing in the pity party to which I could’ve succumbed. 

Top Ten Lists come in handy everywhere!  Even in Wayne's World.

As I shared my stories, my spirits lifted, but what was truly inspiring was listening to other people tell me of their stories.  One person went to Belize over the vacation.  Did you know almost all of the food in Belize is grown locally by Mennonites?  Another person just met her uncle for the first time over the holidays.  No elaboration but it deeply affected her from her demeanor.  Then another person said he and his cousins wanted to play basketball, but the court was covered in snow.  They decided to shovel all the snow and play a little freezing temperature ball at the park.  Can you imagine? 

These rare moments when I can really make a personal connection keep me going sometimes.  Seeing people as the individuals with depth and dimension rather than numbers and graphs and statistics reminds me of all that is important.  The insight I gather gets tucked away for future reference.  I wish I had more chances for this kind of activity and understanding.  For now though, it sustained me through the first day back.

There you have it: a daily dose of happy from a sleep-deprived, grumpy-butt person just tryin’ to get through the day.