Thursday, April 7, 2011

oh happy day!!

Recently in my life I have been working really hard to make a big change. I feel so incredibly stressed out and so crazy moody and just up and down with the anxiety and the worry and bunches of feelings that kind of just pop up like the numbers in a big ol' bingo wheel and I just don't want to live my life like that. I'm just not happy when I am being controlled by all these negative feelings! UGH! So I have been working on letting things go. Just letting things be what they are and taking the time to feel the feelings that are happening and then moving forward instead of all this dwelling and mental towel wringing that I have been doing lately. One of the things that I realized I could change was my attitude towards school. I have been putting in really long hours working on mastering the intricacies of substitution/elimination/addition reactions in organic chemistry. When I say long hours I mean loooooong ones, six hour study sessions with Mason almost every day for the last two weeks long. There were still days when I would be coming home beating myself up over how frustrated I was and how hard the material was and how I would never amount to anything if I fail this class and blah blah blah. Then I just decided to STOP WHINING and just recognize that even if at the end of six hours studying I was frustrated and felt stupid that there just was no possible way that I hadn't learned anything in that time! No possible way. So I just smiled and accepted that it was hard but that I was doing everything I could to do well and that that was exactly as much as I needed to be doing. It felt pretty amazing to just breathe and be able to take time to hang out with JP and the pups and not feel guilty, to indulge in some TV shows at the end of the day and just relax without fretting about this or that. I know that this kind of mind change takes a lot of practice and time and patience, but I really want to be able to show myself that patience and give myself a little bit of credit for how hard I do work. SO, that is one of the changes I am working on making in my life. I feel lighter already and I know my boyfriend more than appreciates not having to deal with the crazier portions of my sometimes obsessive personality! All of this said, I took my exam yesterday and am not letting any worried thoughts creep into my brain about the outcome and am instead taking this gorgeous Colorado day to do a little gardening and play with the little ones out back. I hope you are finding changes in your lives too that you are proud of or working towards. So often changes for me coincide with the changing of the seasons, so spring must be almost here, right?!


When I was moving the bag of soil I found two little worms (which you probably can't see in this picture) and I popped them right into my emerging herb garden!


An herb garden for the backyard.



We even have some pink flowers that just came out yesterday amidst the gloomy cloudy weather!

2 comments:

Nora said...

WHA? i can't believe i missed this post and am just reading it now. it's so EXCITING!!! that's an awesome thing, lady, to work toward making your life less stressful and i like the idea of letting yourself take the time to feel the feelings you're feeling instead of trying to squash them. i also like your title! gotta say- sister act 2 is pretty sweet and they sing "oh happy day" a ton. maybe it's time for you to watch it! haha. well- i'm excited for you, elise. yay for change! welcome, spring!

elise said...

The title totally came straight from your singing voicemail my dear friend! I must admit it's been playing in my head aaalllllll week and is kind of driving me crazy.. Got your card in the mail and it is prominently displayed on the fridge, it's great! Thanks!!