What's Your Mood?

You know those ‟What’s your mood?” posters that hang on every teacher's lounge refrigerator - or maybe it’s on the back of the Office Managers door?  It’s somewhere.  Look.  I know you’ll find at least one in every office. The ones where you just select the picture that shows your mood today. I never know if they are placed there as a way to encourage everyone to find a happy place, or to warn us that someone is close by who should be avoided.

I think I might need to get a couple of those; one for work, and one for home.  The first one would be to show the outward, public view of being confident and happy while occasionally exhausted and hopeful: that’s the one that everyone can see - the public me. I spent way too much time and money earning a degree in theatre not to put it to some use, right? Anyway, I mustn’t forget my mantra, “It’s all good.”  I like the way my friend put it today: he said it was “Ducky!” I like that - Ducky.  Of course, he had to explain it to the 17 year old kid standing next to him, but still ... I like the visual and, after all, it ties into my Disco Duck team. So there you go!  I’m just Ducky!  Stuff just rolls off me like water off a duck's back, right?  Right! ... until I get home.

And then, the curtain closes, the show is over, I take off my duck suit, and I’m left with just me. It’s then I need that other mood chart. I need it to show my true internal view of depression, anxiousness, and frustration. It’s then, when there is nothing to keep everything away that all the “stuff” hits me. All those bits and pieces of the day that had bounced around me tumble back and begin to nag at me once again. Why didn’t I do this? Why did I do that? Was I supposed to do that lesson?  How am I ever going to get through this year? I know I’ll eat lots of FOOD??? NOOO!!... Okay

Those feelings, I guess, we all get from time to time, of uncertainty in our future, our jobs, our decisions. I know I’m not alone in this dilemma, nor are these feelings of frustration unique to just the issue of my work. To compound this mess, I continue to struggle daily with the whole idea of diet and exercise, and the very idea that I can’t have a birthday without getting older is just ludicrous.  I wake every morning and am amazed that I have come through another night. I half expect that God is just waiting for that perfect moment when I’m not looking, to drop the other proverbial shoe, not to be cruel, just because it will be funny. God understands the importance of humor.