What is a good day?
What is a bad day?
Our concepts of either are usually tinted by the events that happen to us – you get a flat tire (bad day), you get a raise (good day), you get a haircut (good day), the haircut is bad (bad day). It’s a way to go through life where one’s enjoyment is reserved for only the obvious moments, the rest is muddling through to get to that point.
What do we call a day where a combination of those events occur? Suppose you get a flat tire on your way to hearing about your raise? “Started off as a bad day, but turned out good.” Or the reverse? “Good day despite getting a flat tire.”
Events take hierarchy, and that’s entirely subjective. What if a really bad event happens the day you get a raise? Conceivably a raise could ensure many future good days, but you took a horrific fall on your way out of the office. How do you weigh the goodness or badness of that day?
Yesterday, by all accounts, was a good day.
I woke up at a good time, showered, listened to music, got my coffee, took some calls, went for a beautiful hike, had lunch, read, worked at learning a new language, did some work, checked in with friends, did some writing, got a good workout in, had a nice dinner, did a little shopping, cleaned up, and got to sleep.
By all means it was a banner day, and it felt good. Mission accomplished.
Today I did the same exact thing and I’m at the writing stage, and it doesn’t feel like a good day for no apparent reason.
A meteor didn’t strike at any of those points during the day. I wasn’t stricken with the shits or anything. A sense of malaise set in right around the fourth item on the list that dragged into the day. Just as I’d picked myself up out of it, I slipped during the hike and spilled the rest of my coffee. It was far up a canyon, no one noticed, but I still sheepishly walked back to the truck, picked up lunch, and went home, bumbled through the rest, took a nap, and here I am.
So truly – what was the difference?
Going into yesterday – I didn’t go into a Monday expecting it to go well. In fact, I expected a series of calamities that usually get written off as “oh, the Mondays!” which is the result of people slumping into the work week and not really knowing how the rest of it’s gonna go – usually the dust settles a little by Tuesday and you think “thank God, I made it through a difficult Monday” or “Monday was quiet and looks like it’s smooth sailing ahead”.
It was the second expectation where the self-deception began.
Today was expected to be a good day. It was expected that things would go well, that I would feel accomplished and moving forward, that somehow it would be an improvement over the previous good day, and maybe it’s just that, good days from here on out, no bad ones, forever and ever amen. Something like that.
Obviously that’s ridiculous. There will be flat tires and falling cartoonishly down hills and missed emails and gassy stomachs and setbacks that are constant and unceasing. Those don’t make up good days or bad days, they’re just the building blocks of days, little things that pile up and are dealt with and you move on.
Days like today are where thoughts creep in: “apartment’s a mess”, “you should be working harder to get this off the ground”, “oh no, you’ll never get that house someday”, “obviously they don’t like you”, “you’re behind schedule”, and so on.
All of that is mental scab picking – you, finding your own areas of weakness and healing, and scratching at them until they bleed and you can find satisfaction in uncovering the weak points, hoping that stronger skin grows in its place.
Picking at the scab of good days causes bad days. It’s setting up false expectations of immediate success, and chasms of disappointment when that success doesn’t immediately happen.
Good days – bad ones are right around the corner!
Good days – at the first sign there could be any difficulty, the bad day’s a comin!
Good days – can’t have too many of them in a row, or you’re cheating some natural order of the universe ending in you getting taken out by a zeppelin or something.
The success, it seems, is in the practice. In sustaining the good habits during the bad days, in the flexibility to respond to bad things happening, in classifying expectations as “baggage” and not bringing them to the table.
Every day is a good day as long as you’re a part of it.
pour one out for a real one