Struggling to Be Happy When Your Persona is Melancholy | Why Life Has Been a Struggle

Well, this week has been a very quick week. It’s felt very robotic. Which usually means I’m not getting enough sleep, not getting much down time, and heading in a downward spiral as far as my outlook. So while I was really wanting to get on here and excitedly report how wonderful life is, I long to moan and groan and whine about not having time. But I’ll save you from that as best as I can. However, we are healthy and still kicking so I suppose that is something.

Things People Say When You are Struggling to Be Content

If I’m honest I’m struggling to be happy and content in the daily grind. But to write and lament about how I’m not very fond of my life right now, would only bring out those that say: 1) You are so ungrateful 2) “My life was worse, so what are you griping about?” 3) “Happiness is a choice, all you have to do is just be happy!” 4) “Don’t be so negative; just keep it positive”. 5). “Put on your rosy glasses”. 6) “Go do therapy”. or 7) “Fake it til you make it.”

Why Those Sayings Don’t Work for Me

For me when I’m in a focused melancholy mood, it’s not that easy. It’s really kinda my persona in a way to be quiet, focused, and subdued, so I’m always fighting to come out of that. God wired my brain to focus on things that need improvement. So I’m in a constant cycle spin to fix my world and the world I’ve chosen to take on.

Eventually you learn to just keep your discontent to yourself (just kidding, I try to but it spills out anyway) but often I do internal eye rolls that no one can see when I’m met with phrases above.

I don’t think I’m depressed or worried so much as I’m just busy and have had so many problems to resolve this week, and several issues to focus on and think about, and pray about. I think it takes the joy out as I’m trying so hard to make so many things come together. And I take it all very seriously. There were just some serious things to resolve this week.

That said it is has been a productive week but we’ve worked hard to make it that way. And a few good things DID make me very happy. 1) We get to go to the beach. 2) Another surprise thing happened this week which will help offset some of our costs lately. A little windfall came, which is a big windfall, when you need it.

We really can’t afford to go to the beach to be honest, but we are doing it and trusting God to provide. And He is answering our prayers.

Speaking of Being Crabby…

We took Mom to Red Lobster for her Mother’s Day. We both got crab legs. I am glad it was paired with steak as it was kinda hard getting the crab out of those small crab legs. It doesn’t compare to the ones you get in Florida. Totally different experience. But it was nice to get to eat out. The service sucked. I think there were two servers in the whole restaurant and they would not seat everyone in all the seats because no one was there to serve. This has been a problem since Covid. So yeah, we were there a long time and finally got food and took Mom home and I was late getting into bed. I think I’ve not topped any more than 5.5 to 6 hours per night and I do best to get 7 and 7.5 hours per night. George and I don’t eat out as much anymore, but Mom and I do a lot. Red Lobster has always been slow in MOUNT JULIET for some reason.

Our Fellow Blog Buddy has her first Book

Guess what came in! I have a blog buddy that came out with her first book The Bayou Heist which is on Amazon here. You can find the author here at the Cupcakecache Blog I’m looking forward to reading it. It may be a while though b/c I am not getting a lot of reading time in. The days have been so packed. I’m still on the Spare. There has just not been any time since the weekend to read anything, not even a chapter.

Things I’ve been Heavily Focused on This Week

I suppose these things have made my week extra busy on top of the work week. Some of which stole some of my joy. Getting up in the 4 a.m hour and working a FT schedule (out of town) is the base of my week, but I also had these things going on.

1. The vacation booking. It’s been a little stressful. And it all happened really fast. And I accidentally booked the flight to Pensacola instead of Panama City as well as the car and had to change both. Luckily I could do that. Thank the Good Lord. And I’m glad I figured it out. I had asked Katy how far it was to Panama City from Pensacola and she was like whhhhhattt? So we caught it and I fixed it.
2. Financial situation. We have been a little, I’m sorry -a lot stressed over our immediate cash flow. Life is more expensive lately, and we don’t want to get into our investments. So we’ve had this on our minds and discussed it. Mainly we are still paying for the flooring and it will be easier when that is done. But then life has gone up and so expensive and it’s just getting harder.
3. Mother’s Day – only a minor concern, but we did carve out time to do Mom’s Mother’s Day Wednesday night. We put Dexter in Doggy Daycare Wednesday to play with others so he’d be tired Wed night. George took Mom some of her yard poles to hold flags, plants, etc. Which meant we had to go in the old Flinstone mobile to get them there.
4. Mom’s finances. This has really taken a chunk of time the last week or two to learn her bank, learn her finances, the payees etc. And there have been some surprises which I’ll list separately.
5. I’ve been working with – I’m sorry – fighting with her HOA. Everyone has said “don’t bother, you won’t get anywhere”. They were right. She can fight it at the board meeting they said. She won’t do that. I told her we were unlikely to do that for her either.
6. I set up a payee wrong with Symspire and sent the check to Mom instead of the Symspire address. LOL. I thought it was asking for Mom’s address since it asked for her account number. Duhhhhh! I got that mailed off to the right place after picking up the check from Mom and re-mailing. I called them to let them know why it was late and they said they would not do a late charge if they got it by early next week.
7. Mom had two “once a year” type things to come due and surprised her and she had asked me not to pay anything else til her check came in later in the month. It’s her finances but we had to talk.
8. Had a financial discussion meeting with Mom with the things due between now and when her check comes in so we could resolve how to pay them. And discuss the HOA as well. I saved that for last as to not rattle her nerves. It’s awful but I have to carefully craft serious conversations so they don’t blow up. I was prepared to give her the entire stack of finances back if it had. lol. We resolved the issues, she made the money available to her checking fund and I was able to pay everything due (some will be late as it may not go through til Monday since I paid after dinner last night). I was also able to convince her to go ahead and make the payments of all the extra charges on the HOA account (late fees, service charges, lien intent charge). So now she is no longer in delinquent status. I didn’t want her losing the house and an HOA can totally take your house away in some instances without you even knowing it’s happened. So this has been paid. I told her since it’s been delinquent over a year already, there’s no telling where they are in the process. So glad this is paid. I was proud of her for handling this financial discussion well. She started to cry, she started to get mad but she turned it around. I’m sooo proud of her for that.
9. It’s on the list to see if there is a lien against her house. George knows how to have it checked and said we could do it for free. So I need to do that.
10. I got the video finished and scheduled in the one hour of free time I had earlier in the week, LOL. Have been trying all week to find time to edit next video but something has over taken every morsel of free time this week. Because of Mom’s finances, I have even had time to exercise the last two days. I used one 15 minutes just to do mindfulness – I needed it more than exercises to let my mind process and catch up to everything that is happening.
11. I had extra work this week which was has taken about of day of my work week. Also other departments issues have given me more work trying to go back in time to fix it. I will say that it is getting harder and harder to work where I work. We had such a streamline going there for a while. But I was having to light fires under people to get things done so it would not impact me if they didn’t. I finally gave up trying to light fires under everyone else’s seat and just did my own job and grabbed the popcorn and watched the train start wrecking. I was sinning trying to make people do their jobs. It was making me so mad. So I just said “fine, I’ll cut my arm off that is making me sin and get upset with people”. So I leave them alone to either do their job or not. I no longer make it my job to tell them to do their job. I’d rather sit in peace and do extra work in peaceful harmony and clean up the mess, than have to become angry with people to get things done to avoid having a mess. It’s been great flipping this around. I just don’t worry about it anymore. I DO have an increased work load over it, and other’s on a different end, end up doing the fighting over it now – but it’s been great just letting THAT go! So be it.
12. Mom’s doc appt changed so I had to reschedule that.
13. Had to get Fancy’s vet appointment set up
14. Now our Investment company (through our financial advisor) is having me to set up a log in. Why this all is falling in one week is beyond me. I have 72 hours to sign in. I was too tired last night so need to do that tonight, plus I’m cooking tonight and have to go to the store after work.
15. Also Mom’s eye appt is today and I have to go in late and get off late
16. I’m very behind at work because of all that stuff going on I mentioned earlier. But it’ll get done when it gets done I guess. At least I will sit there in peace and do it. They get so many hours from me and then I have other responsibilities and things to do from there. Life is full everywhere – not just there.

Weekend Ahead

So I’m trying to have joy and contentment but every minute I’ve been spinning my wheels making life happen and trying to fix issues and messes, some of which has been kinda serious. I’m trying to sniff the roses when I see any. I’ve not seen any. I did see a deer yesterday go up and sniff a cat’s but, so I’ll take that. And I saw a redbird and I’ll take that.

Oh, but there is one things that I did see this week I’ve never seen before, that eventually made me laugh. I saw a guy smoking a banana in a car in a parking lot. This resulted in me and my boss looking up to see if there was a banana pipe, only to find out you could make a pipe out of a banana. We saw a video on it. This resulted in many jokes throughout the week. “Need a banana?” lol. George emails me every day saying, “wanna me to stop and get some bananas?”

I’m trying ya’ll. I really am. Today’s Friday and a very full one. Tomorrow is Saturday. The video goes live in the a.m. and I’ll come here to share it. George’s sister and hubby are coming in to town for lunch and we are taking them to the airport so they can go to Ireland. I’m so excited for them. I have a lot planned for tomorrow too but will prioritize them and then get what I can done.

Then Sunday’s Mother’s Day and we are going to Whattaburger. Then I get a Long Horn dinner out but I told George he didn’t have to take me for that since we were short on funds. But He insists I get a private special dedicated dinner out to relax. I love him.