Living it up on a down day
It's funny because it's trite.
It’s tough to produce when you’re feeling down. Very few jobs are conducive to a depressed spirit. And no one really likes being around a downer. But we all get down from time to time. And the workday doesn’t stop because those happy feelings are distant.
I looked up some numbers on depression but they were too depressing to reprint here. Seriously. We Americans are truly in a sad state of affairs (pun intended).
So what do you do if your work calls for you to be cheery and upbeat when you feel like dog poop? Well, there’s a few schools of thought on the remedy:
- Just start smiling and fake your way to happiness
- Don’t fake it but take a sick day to get over it
- Go into work and bring everybody down
I like Option #1, though I’ll concede that it’s the hardest of the three. By default most folks will choose Option #3 which is easiest and also the worst. Unfortunately, Option #2 assumes that there are sick days to be taken. If no sick days are left, watch out coworkers. I’m going down and bringing you all down with me!
Yet sometimes the work has to get done regardless. This is especially true for self-employed people and freelance workers. There’s no clocking in and just sitting there stewing. If the work doesn’t get done, the client doesn’t pay. So usually Option #2 and #3 are not really options.
It would be great if all employees thought of themselves as self-employed. And, really, it’s true. We’re all free to move to and from income sources if we want to and advance through hard work (office politics notwithstanding). That kinda lifts things up a little, don’t it?
Another thing that helps is to look forward to something like a vacation or a date. No vacation or date? Plan one. It doesn’t take a lot of money for either. (I’ve been guilty of passing on both because I’m cheap and I’ve suffered because of it. My good friend Charlotte has opened my eyes to stepping away from work to recharge my batteries.)
Probably the best thing to bring you up is to have a dream and a goal to reach it. Say you want to visit Italy, start planning it. It may be as small as making a beautiful picture of that region your monitor’s wallpaper but it’s a start. Every time you look at it you’ll think to yourself, “I’m going there someday!” (Just don’t let it depress you that “someday” is not “today.”)
What’s that? It’s all a bunch of mumbo-jumbo? We’ll if you’re one of the people who thinks that way, sorry. Keep thinking that way and bringing yourself down. And keep far away from me. I’m done with surrounding myself with negative people. I’m going to the Land of the Positives.
Want to come with? After all, you did say you needed a vacation…
May 20th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Having something to look forward to IS critical to maintaining a fairly positive disposition at work. I’m in the military myself and it isn’t so much that I have something to do later that affects my mood, but the people I’m surrounded by. None of us really have a choice in whether or not we come into work; it’s all about getting the job done and going home at the end of the day.
There may be a depressing element here or there, but those of us with sense enough to put a smile on our face and approach the day with a determined demeanor know that our attitudes will be shared amongst our co-workers. The cheery and hopeful responses are typically what I look forward to at work.
That and Fridays, and who doesn’t love Friday?