Some Days Are Harder Than Others

We all have days where we feel tired and discouraged. Today happens to be one of those days for me. As a Re-booter and the author of this blog, I feel it’s my responsibility to focus on the positive, to rally, to strive for endurance. As a normal person, I feel plain tired, beat up, fed up, and not particularly enthusiastic about anything.

 

When was the last time you’ve felt something similar?

 

By my count, there are a great number of people who’d answer, “Right now,” “Yesterday,” or “Who cares because there’s no sign of anything changing in the foreseeable future.”

 

In Tom Petty’s hit song Here Comes My Girl, he writes,

 

“You know sometimes, I don’t know why,

But this old town seems so hopeless.

Yeah, I ain’t really sure, but it seems I remember the good times

Were just a little bit more in focus….

Every now and then I get down to the end of the day

And I have to stop and ask myself why I’ve done it.

It just seems so useless to have to work so hard

And nothin’ ever really seems to come from it.”

 

I hear ya, Tom.

 

I’ll get to the re-booting portion of our show later on, but for now, I want to focus on acknowledging just how hard and how futile our lives can seem. Not all of it; not 100%, but enough to make us wonder why we bother.

 

As Exhibit A, I will confess that the endless, soul crushing effort of seeking out employment, lo these many months and months and months, with barely an acknowledgement let alone an expression of interest from anyone has thoroughly disheartened me. I came this close to finally landing a job awhile back—after three months, 6 rounds, 9 interviewers, and 11 separate conversations—only to lose out to the guy they’d worked with before. When it came down to it, I was the bigger risk. Counterbalance this colossal endeavor with discovering that my struggles have been a source of gossip and entertainment for someone I know and, well, it doesn’t help that despite assiduously dieting the past two weeks, the scale shows no movement.

 

As Exhibit B, I can cite myriad examples of chronic, low to medium grade conditions of hostility between people—situations where the financial arrangements are irrevocably entangled; or where one member is so alienated, hostile, or holds such fixed ideas that talking is a no-go; or, perhaps, a health condition makes it impossible to exit stage left. In other words, complicated situations that are extremely difficult to address, repair, or resolve.

 

I hope your struggles are not quite so miserable/life-choices-questioned/despair inducing as mine feel to me, but I am sympathetic to the fact that, whatever your predicaments are, they engender despondency in you. (For the record, I acknowledge, too, that everything we are wrestling with pales in comparison to the suffering and atrocities going on in Syria and other war torn locales, but our personal suffering is a valid concern and a priority for each of us.) So, what are we gonna do to pull ourselves out of it? You and me: we’re in this together.

 

Well, to begin with, I gave myself the day off—instead of adhering to my lockstep schedule, I lay in bed, trying to cajole my way out of a full fledged bout of depression. I carved out some time alone. And, I made the disciplined decision not to throw a giant pity party (as tempting as it is) because it gets me nowhere I want to go. As Re-booters, we’ve seen enough to know that self-pity is unproductive and only makes things harder on us and those we care about. I try not to complain to those close to me because I know they’re struggling, too. My problems are for me to solve—even when the other person refuses to change. I am grateful for the support and help that others want to give, and accept the kindnesses offered, but there’s only so much anyone else can do.

 

Contrary to much of what is broadcast on tv, we aren’t here to “have fun.” There is no guarantee that things will work out the way we hope, regardless of the effort we’ve expended. But, what we Re-booters can do is try our best to live serenely with the hand we’ve been dealt.

 

This may not be a very satisfactory conclusion to this post, but it’s the only one I’ve got. In the meantime, I’m going to pull myself out of this funk, get back on that treadmill, and listen to Tom sing his songs of wistful woe.

Tags: Here Comes My Girl, job search, personal struggles, re-boot, self-pity, sense of futility, soul crushing, Tom Petty