Sentimental Sunday: What Does Past Me Have to Say to Present Me? Post 2117

It is Sunday again, and I have a little bit of time before I have to head out into the time change world to try to sing enough to lead worship this morning. It is time to see what past me has to say to present me. I plugged in the number of posts that I have written on this blog about music, therapy, and me (3,393) into a random number generator and then started up the generator. It spat out post #2117, so I am taking a glimpse back to February 27, 2019. 

Oh, February.

It is usually the month where we get the most inclement weather. For it being the shortest month in duration, it always seems like the longest month of the year. This year was no exception. I was not looking forward to anything about February 27th - it was a Wednesday. It was a 12-hour day. It was a possible inclement weather day after a series of inclement weather days. I was not happy when I was writing.

One of the things that I am noticing more and more about myself and about the people around me is when we get stuck in a negative pattern.

I am easily swept into negativity - I focus only on what goes wrong around me and have difficulty glimpsing what is going well. So, I do my best to make positivity a daily practice. It is not always easy, but there are times when it is essential for my mental well-being to find something positive in the perceptions that try to take over my brain.

Over my years of being a human on this planet (as opposed to what? I have no idea...), I have noticed that people get out of the world what they expect to see. If I head into a Wednesday with a crappy attitude, then it will probably be a crappy day. If I head into a Wednesday with a more positive outlook, I will probably feel better about what goes on during that time. When I spend time around people who cannot find any good in what happens around them, then the negativity becomes contagious, and I don't like being contaminated by the emotions of others.

Is this part of being empathetic? The emotional contamination? I think it is.

It is November now, not February, so I am not feeling as much negativity as I do in the second month of every year. We haven't had any inclement weather yet, and winter is still being held off by autumn. We just changed our clocks back an hour, so I get an extra amount of time in the morning - the best time of day for me - before heading out to work every day. My biggest concern with this "fall back" time change is that I want to go to sleep with the sunset, so it becomes difficult to remain awake once the sun goes down. I have to fight the urge to sleep once the sun sets at 5pm. I do not often do well when it is dark after a long day at work, but I try my best.

This is a good time of year for me. I like the darkness. I think I would be a pretty good candidate for living in places where there are more hours and months of darkness than sunshine. I've never tried it before, but I might like living farther north of where I am right now. I wonder if part of my February mollygrumps have something to do with the daylight getting longer. That's something to think about.

For now, though, I will take the reminder that negativity often begats negativity, and I will step into the dark world with a positive attitude. See you tomorrow?