Blah

Today I woke up in an awful mood. This wasn't completely bad, because it gave me a chance to note that I couldn't remember the last time I was in such a bad mood, which says something good about my mood lately. However, having mainly been in a neutral to good mood for most days in recent memory, I've forgotten how to cope with such a global sense of blah. This was not improved when I went to take my road test for my drivers license, the sole reason for me rushing home to Cambridge last night, and found out somehow that my booking had been lost in the internet. This is probably Facebooks fault. This further entrenched me in my bad mood.

When I returned home from my not road test, I decided that my quest for the day was to not give into my bad mood. It's just a state of mind, and since I am my mind, I should control that shit. So, I put on some excessively happy music and started dancing like a crazy person. Which helped briefly, until I decided I also needed water and tried to combine the two. Take note, nearly choking to death doesn't beat bad moods.

Later, I decided that I should go for a walk by the river (this is a river in my home town, so not as elusive as the BC rivers), because water always cheers me up. Then my iPod ran out of batteries, which always spells tragedy for me. But, despite that, I did feel a little better at the water. I thought of things that make me happy, like delicious treats and friends that dance a lot. Feeling good, I decided to walk back home. Then, all my mood reparations were stripped away by an old man arguing with another old man about the speed of his scooter. As I passed, they said something inaudible, then I heard the one say, "Like you could have a woman like that, you old cripple. She does have nice hair though." At which point I went back to my bad mood after vomiting in my mouth a little bit. This is one of the many reasons that I never intend on moving back to this city.

This was the point where it was clear to me that the bad mood was not the result of my state of mind, but of an evil demon that was trying to kill me. This is not the first time this particular situation has occurred to me, so I wasn't too surprised.

Okay, maybe it wasn't actually an evil demon, but that does seem like a much more interesting explanation than "stress", which is the most likely culprit. This stress is coming from a number of sources, but the number one source that is only going to get worse, is the approach of licensing exams at the end of the summer. I suspect that I'm not alone in this, as many of my colleagues will endure it with me.

But, fear not, I have a plan. From today until the end of licensing exams, I'm going to think of one song that is guaranteed to make me smile, and post it, so that, hopefully, it can make others smile too. I'm not certain how many happy songs I have right now, but there is a chance this will force me to seek out new ones (by which I mean, feel free to send your favorites).

First song that is guaranteed to make me smile: Don't Stop Believing by Journey. Although in the past I complained about its lack of specificity, I've realized that might actually be another positive of the song. It allows the song to be used in many variable circumstances. You could be believing that you're in love, I mean, it's a little cliche, but acceptable. But you could also believe exciting things, like you're actually royalty, secretly stolen at birth and that some day they will find you and give you many many jewels. Or that someday, with the power of only your mind, you can learn to turn various household objects into spoons. Also, I often find my shadow is searching in the night. What it's looking for, I'm not sure. Maybe another shadow, or many many jewels.

No longer lost, again

Following on yesterday's cow-petting success, when I woke up today, I decided that this was the day I was going to make it to the elusive river that somehow evaded me last Thursday. My saga began with Shamus reminding me of the correct direction and Lilliput telling me that if I see a Dairy Queen on the way then I'm going the right way and if I cross a river, then I've missed it. In this way it really was like a mystical quest, because there were challenges and obstacles along the way, like not forgoing my river trip for a delicious Blizzard. But I made it, reaffirming my recent blog theme of "If at first you don't succeed, try again". Apparently it works both with scary cows and missing rivers. I suspect that you don't believe that I made it, based on my track record, but here is evidence.
Note the water, and the bike helmet, and the horrible helmet hair. That's right, I did not fake this. I actually found a river.

Once I got there, it wasn't quite what I built it up to me. Don't get me wrong, I mean, the river was nice, but I was somehow expecting more at this point, like mystical fairy ferry boats to take me to the land of gumdrops and infinite bubble wrap on the other side. There were few of these, so, I just biked along, singing "Just around the river bend" and smiling at strangers who did not seem to have the same trouble I do finding rivers. Then I remembered that my brother had told me there was a Heron preserve down the river path, and I had a new goal: to see the Heron preserve. I biked and I biked, and just when I thought all was lost I saw it. And it said no bikes allowed. So, I decided to just keep going, and realized with excitement that there was a Heron trail, which only seemed to discourage motorized vehicles. So, I started along it and quickly found this:
Disappointing. Except, now I have a new dream, and that is to complete the Heron Loop Trail before I die. I didn't say it was a good dream, just a new one.

Eventually, I reached what seemed like the end of my riverside bike trail and decided to head back. I decided to take a slightly different path, which I expected would keep me near the riverbed. Instead I ended up here:
I hope that having seen this, you have the proper respect for the fact that I found water at all, given my "special" sense of direction. You can't see it in this picture, unless you are superman, but there is a person in the gravel pit to the right. He seemed to be dancing, or exercising. Either way, I couldn't figure out why one would specifically come to a gravel pit on a random path to do either. But then I thought, maybe, just maybe, he'd been path dancing and then suddenly realized he really needed to gravel pit dance. I wanted to make friends at this point, but I think my multiple attempts to get a picture of him dancing didn't win his affection, so I just kept biking.

As I biked, I got introspective (or delirious, it's sometimes hard to tell when one's had too much sun and not enough food/water) and thought about how the best part of being someone who has the ability to get lost even on linear trails is that I know I've always found my way home eventually. This might not seem like a positive part of getting lost easily as much as a neutral thing, but it's actually good because it works well as a metaphor for life. And everyone knows that metaphors rarely lie. I mean, with the obvious exceptions, like when they trick you into thinking you're on fire while dancing or that various household appliances can purr and therefore may actually be cats. I think I was getting to a deep thought about life, but now I'm just feeling betrayed by all the horrible lying metaphors that have hurt me over the years. You'll have to wait for another post to hear my thoughts on river finding as metaphor.