Attitude Adjustments.

Last night one of the respiratory therapists asked me what was wrong, and said that I always look unhappy. 

Always look unhappy.

That made me want to cry.  I am not unhappy at work.  Believe it or not, most nights I like my job.  I usually like my patients.

(At least on the nights where I don’t have 2 individual patients having various degrees of a psychotic break at the same time.  Those nights I neither like my patients or my job.)

Why do I not look happy?  Do I not smile enough?  I have been thinking lately that I need to work on some attitude adjustments… I don’t like how often I join in the gripping about things we don’t like.  How often I bring up the negative.  How often I complain about day shift and ER and all that jazz… I do it a lot at work.  

But still… I never expected to be told I always look unhappy.

Sigh.  My attitude has stunk lately.  I know it… the people who talk to me daily know it. 

I was told that my facebook status updates have sounded depressed lately.  I had a friend come and take a 2 hour walk with me today after working for 10 hours because she was worried about me.  Now, that says great things about my friend, but not good for me.

I tell people I like my life.  I like my job, I love my apartment.  I have good friends.  But yet I act like it isn’t enough.

Dad was talking to me tonight about a client who is having panic attacks as she sets up a trust fund for her grandson.  She so desperately wants to make the right choice she is having a hard time making any choice.  dad’s thought was that anything was better than what she had now, which is nothing.  There is no losing.

I have a lot of great options, great choices, in my life coming up.  In reality, non of them are bad choices.  Staying here is no more a bad choice than going to alaska or moving back to my hometown.  I have good choices, and eventually I will chose one and be done with it.  But I have always said that I want to be happy where I am now.  Without making a million conditions… I will be happy when I get a house or when I get this job or when I make this group of friends.

I am failing at this goal of being happy.  I don’t like failing, and especially here, so I need to change.  How, I do not know exactly.  I am still working on a plan.  (we all know how I love my plans.) 

I always hear people talk about choosing to be happy.

I want people at work to see me as the girl who is happy.  Who smiles and doesn’t sit around whining about everything that is wrong with the world.

So.  That is my new goal… one attitude adjustment coming right up.  We shall see how it goes…