When it Rains it Pours

Bad things happen in threes, or so they say. But when there are no significant bad things, suddenly we’re playing emotional buckaroo by placing more and more straw on the proverbial camel’s back until the pressure is so great the poor beasts back breaks.

We all know the feeling. You have a stressful day at work, where nothing is wrong but maybe everything takes longer than it should to get done, or things don’t quite go according to plan so you have to pivot and find work arounds on the spot. Then you drive home and realise you’re out of fuel so you have to stop for that, when really, after the day you just had, you just want to get home. Then you do get home and find the cat has knocked your book off the table, and the bookmark has fallen out. Then you thought you had something in the fridge for dinner, but it went out of date yesterday…and then you stub your toe!

Suddenly everything hits you at once. The frustration, exhaustion, annoyance and the jolt of pain. It’s too much. Sorry Mr Camel, looks like it’s broken.

Bad days happen. Life can be a lot to deal with. Things pile up when we aren’t looking, then bulldozer over us when we least expect it. Is there a way to stop this happening? Not really. Not unless you are able to take a moment for self-care and self-soothing after every little inconvenience. But, even then, sometimes we don’t notice how the little things affect us until they come together.

We notice when we accidently tread on a Lego brick, boy, do we notice. Whereas stepping on one little marble may cause some minor slippage. But, taking a step onto a hundred little marbles will send you flying up in the air, and landing, with all the grace of a screaming goat, onto your back-side. All that it to say, the little, seemingly insignificant issues we face daily, can congeal into one very bad day.

I believe, that when you have gotten to that point of being faced with a bad day made up of many individual issues, it if probably time to declare the day a write off. You don’t actually write off the day. Life doesn’t work that way…unless you can just stop doing anything else and go to bed.

I find, the simple act of vocalising that “today is a write off” helps to begin the process of tying up the bad-day-ness in the hopes that it doesn’t drift into your tomorrow. Try and wipe the slate clean, reset the counter of inconveniences, put an ice pack on your sore toe, shower and wash away the day. Tomorrow, it starts all over again, new camel, fresh batch of straw, hopefully this new camel can bare the load…hopefully there are fewer straws to bare.

Fingers crossed for a better day tomorrow.

JT