Five Things I'm Thankful For

I thought I'd do a list of five things I'm thankful for. Sometimes it helps to remember all the good things you have going on in your life so you won't focus on some of the negative things.

So here they are:

1. My family: I'm thankful for the support my family has given me throughout the good times and bad. They've always shown me love even when they don't quite understand the decisions I've made. They are getting better at trusting me to know what is best for me, and for that I'm truly grateful. 

2. My friends: Again, I'm thankful for the support of my friends who I know I can talk to about anything. They may not always understand my mental illness but they are willing to be there and listen.

3. My friends on twitter with mental illness: Some days it really helps to scroll through twitter and see other people going through the exact same thing or something similar. Seeing their uplifting blog posts and tweets makes my day a little bit better, and knowing that my tweets are helping them too makes me happy. 

4. Music: Spotify playlists are almost always playing whether I'm writing, cooking, or doing some sort of yarn work. Music always helps me feel better. At the moment I've been really enjoying Jazzy Cocktail piano music. 

5. Writing: Writing out my thoughts and feelings is exceedingly helpful. It helps me realize that sometimes my thoughts are simply negative thoughts and they are just critical and untrue. It's also a helpful tool to keep track of how I'm feeling. Plus writing in general, like this blog, makes me happy! 

What are some things you are thankful for?

Off Days: What To Do With Them

Today was definitely an "off day" for me.

The kind of day you don't want to admit that something is wrong and it's not just that you don't want to go to work.

I've written a lot about working in this blog, because that's something that stresses me out and I'm still getting used to it.

Lately it seems Wednesdays are the hardest days for me to get up and go to work. Tuesdays are usually fine, because I don't normally work on Mondays, but the past two weeks I have worked Monday. Last week I was lucky and only had to stay at work on Wednesday for half of a day. The week before, it just didn't happen.

Today, I woke up after pushing the snooze button on my alarm three times to where I was going to be at least fifteen minutes late. It didn't help that the day before I had a really frustrating day and I didn't want to have to put myself back in that environment. To make things worse I'd felt weepy all day, and then found out before I went to bed that one of my favorite professors had died.

To say the least, I didn't wake up feeling motivated to do anything let alone go to work.

Then the guilt sets in. I start piling it all on thinking about how I should have just gone to work because I need to make the money. And how I'm lazy and a bad person because I didn't go. I start worrying about what is my boss going to think of me and is she going to be angry?

Most of these thoughts are not even realistic. Of course I need to make the money, but that can be solved by working an extra day or even two half days if I really need to split them up. I'm lucky that my boss is understanding. Of course I don't want to take advantage of this, but then again I don't want to compromise my health either.

I'm not going to lie and say I haven't spent some of today feeling guilty and bad about myself. But sometimes you have to let yourself feel these things. So I told myself I'd let myself feel bad for some of today but then I'm going to do something that will make me feel better, even if I feel like I don't deserve it. So I'm going to hang out with my friend and that's that. I'm done feeling bad about myself for today.

Tomorrow is going to be better and work is going to be fine.

What do you do when you have off days?