Get Me a Mood Ring, Stat

During this new era of my life, I'm happy to say that for the first time in a long time (if not ever), I'm in a good mood more often than not. This isn't really something that I'm used to if I'm being entirely honest. I've talked about my struggle with that period of time after I graduated from college and moved back home while I tried to sort out my life. But even before that, I had my other struggles that seemed to hold me back from celebrating my happiness and let myself bask in it. There was always something holding me back but now I feel like Shawn Mendes and THERE'S NOTHING HOLDING ME BACK. 

Sorry, I had to make that joke. 

It's actually not entirely true, either. I could pretend that there is some higher power that is keeping me from achieving peak nirvana–I'm talking the feeling that I get during a Niall Horan concert when I  could not give zero shits about anything besides having fun–and is putting a wrench in my plans to be happy, but really, that's not true in my case. It's not a higher power or some big conspiracy against me. It's just, well, me. And my brain. And my feelings. But it's chill. It's 2018, we don't have to pretend to be in a good mood all the time, right?

Sometimes I swear things would just be easier if I had a mood ring like I did in the early 2000s...

As I said though, I tend to have a resting mood of contentment. Like, I'm doing okay most of the time which is a success in my book. I could chalk it up to a lot of things like, you know, being employed and living in New York City and the existence of Shake Shack's cheese fries. Logically speaking, what goes up must come down at some point, so sometimes I'm not chilling at that level of contentment that I waited so long to reach consistently. It sucks to be knocked down a peg or two or ten when that wave of a sour mood washes in and decides to consume you, y'know, just for fun presumably.

I don't usually know what the root of my bad moods are, unless I'm on my period and then it's pretty obvious that I'm in a bad mood because I'm hormonal and have cramps and want to eat my way through every single bodega's supply of junk food until I start to feel sorry for myself for treating my mouth and body as a human garbage disposal. But if it's not period week then it's always a crapshoot. Did I have enough sugar? Did I get enough sleep? Am I purposely creating stress for myself because I wasn't feeling stressed out enough and needed to amp that up a bit because I'm a dramatic human being who convinced herself that she strives under high-pressure situations where she makes herself feel like garbage in order to #GetShitDone? It's truly a mystery, but it happens. Not super frequently, but enough to fuck up the equilibrium of my emotions and make things off kilter for a day or so.

Or, if it was last week, an entire five day work week of me feeling like I was seventeen* again on the good ole emotional scale. 

* I'm not quite sure if 17 was actually a bad year for me but it was the first number that came to my mind. It's safe to assume that any year of my life post-elementary school that wasn't age 19.5 or 20 was a weird year for me.

Last week I felt like I was on edge for five days straight and I wasn't quite sure (a) why it happened and (b) how to shake it. The good thing about me trying to shake the feeling is that I could at least recognize the dramatic switch in my emotions and how I was feeling on a day to day basis and acknowledged them instead of writing it off as "just how I am sometimes." The bad thing about it is, of course, the fact that sometimes I just don't know how to shake it. Or if I even can.

The "practical" advice that someone would give would just be "do something that makes you happy!"  and Carol, while that is all fine and dandy, it's not necessarily reality, unfortunately. Things aren't that simple all the time. It's not really all about trying to make the feeling go away necessarily (though that is an added bonus) but how to not let it affect the way that you treat people and treat yourself. Sometimes you just can't go about things the same way that you would when you were in a better mood. It's all about balance and learning how to adjust the scale when you're not feeling your best but still want to get through the day as you normally would. 

Maybe you have to make a few dietary adjustments. Maybe you take a little bit of extra time to yourself. Maybe you take a walk and try to clear your head. It's all subjective and truly depends on your preferences and circumstances and what is your preferred method of "centering" yourself. It's not really about actively trying to make the feeling disappear entirely and focusing all of your time and energy on this sudden shift of mood into the negatives *. We know ourselves better than anyone else and sometimes have to follow what our body is telling us.

Sweater: Zara

Jeans: Old Navy

Shoes: Nine West

Sunglasses: Free People