On Giving Up...

I tried so hard this week to sit in my Pit of Despair and think of all the reasons I should give up on things.  I had grand plans of living in that Pit for the rest of my life.  But, fortunately or unfortunately, I can't seem to sustain discouragement for as long as I would like.

It's definitely been a long, discouraging week, but four days of wallowing in self pity is plenty for me.  There's seriously too much to be grateful and happy about to hang out in there for very long.  The sun comes up and the birds start singing and darn it if I'm not compelled to climb out of the Pit.  

Sunrises Make Me Happy.  It's hard to stay grumpy and sad when the sky looks like this in the morning...  

(There are definitely benefits to having a 15-year-old who wants to drive everywhere.  If I had been driving, I would never have been able to catch this shot.)  

Productivity Makes Me Happy.  I have spent this entire week holed up in my house with the ancestors.  My obsessive need to tidy when I'm irritable and my desire to speak to as few humans as possible when I'm sad leads to pretty productive family history days.  I think I found about 50 names and cleaned up a whole family of duplicates.  

Singing Makes Me Happy.  I can sing again!...which is great for so many reasons.  We had a super intense three-hour DMCO rehearsal tonight and I was even able to sing the high notes!  I can't even tell you what a huge relief it is to be able to produce sound again.  Who knew laryngitis would make me so miserable?  
In previous DMCO seasons, I've stood on the front row for rehearsals, but since I've returned, there seem to be a lot of divas enthusiastic women up there, and it's way too squishy and competitive for me, so I've moved to the back.  And aside from not being able to really see anything over all the tall people, I really love it back there.  It's a totally different perspective to be able to hear the entire choir.  And the tall people are really friendly!  I just have to make sure to sit on the end so I can scoot into the aisle when I need to see the director.  

Music Makes Me Happy.  And this is a really cute song about persistence...

I'm grateful that in some things, persistence is the only option, and that life outside the Pit of Despair is so much better than life inside it.  

"Joy is not an alternative to opposition, it is part of a compound that comes out of our coping with the challenges and conditions of mortality." - Bruce C Hafen, Opposition, Joy and the Nice Life, Ensign, December 1992