jc.tryps

Today has been one of those days when everything sort of almost works but not quite. Not one of those days that seem to be dedicated to in-depth explorations of the deepest dimensions of Murphy’s Law, just one of those days when everything, and I do mean everything, turns into a hassle. No matter what you do it ends up being more time-consuming, more stressful and not at all as easy as you anticipated. Things don’t go really wrong, but they don’t really go right either. Like a light version of Murphy’s Law.

In an attempt to not only have these experiences affect my mood in a negative way I therefore decided to explore them a bit to see if there was any sort of pattern I could detect. Or to put it differently, was I doing anything to influence these seemingly random events? Is there a lesson to be learned here somewhere? Because that’s what it’s about, right? Learning from your experiences.

So if I think back, the first thing that happened was that I overslept. Nothing tragic there, I didn’t miss an important appointment or anything like that, it just wasn’t really an ideal way to start the day. Then I checked my emails and found a confirmation email that wasn’t really confirming what I wanted it to confirm. Next thing on my agenda was to set up a facebook page for this blog and that worked ok until it was clear that I couldn’t generate a URL. First it was a lack of “likes” and now it’s the update function that refuses to work. (And this particular point of my day somehow seems to sum it all up very nicely btw.) In the afternoon my doorbell rang and I was happy to discover it was a parcel I had been waiting for that finally arrived. But when I opened it my happiness was somewhat tainted by the fact that some of the bags of spices that was in it had, not so much broken as disintegrated, and everything in the package was covered with turmeric. After having cleaned this mess up and put the fabrics, that were also in the package, in the washing machine, I went to register for a course only to find out that there were no available places for the week I was planning to take it. And because of this I also had to rearrange some travel plans. Murphy’s Law light, right? I then went out to run some errands and meet up with some friends. But as it turned out one of the two items I wanted to sort out was a no go, and then my friends were late, I was walking and they had bikes, so we agreed to catch up on the way to the place we were going, but ended up missing each other. We of course met once we were all there, so no big deal, but it still felt pretty symptomatic for the general vibe of the day I was having. I feel I should also mention that it was +2°C and raining, just to give insight to the ambience so to speak. Anyway, I then came home and checked my mailbox, and what did i find if not the same, in my opinion incorrect, confirmation that had already dismayed me when I found it in my emails this morning but this time in paper form. And as previously mentioned I still can’t generate the URL for the facebook page.

That was pretty much my day, some minor trials aside. No disasters, no tragedies, but a lot of hassle and nuisance. So is there a patterns, apart from the general peskiness, could I have done anything differently? I don’t really think so. All these events do strike me as pretty hard to influence in real-time so to speak. It’s not like I could have done anything to not have those spice bags be broken or that course to not be fully booked. In retrospect of course I could have avoided both those things with a bit more planning, but today, at the moment when it happened, there was pretty much shit and nothing I could do about it. And like I said, none of today’s events were a disaster, it was all perfectly manageable, it just meant more hassle. The more esoteric approach would of course be to say that it’s all about my frame of mind, that it’s because I am registering these events that this day appears to have a theme of Murphy’s Law light. And be as it may with that, but I can say for sure that yesterday was a lot smoother. There were no turmeric covered parcels yesterday and there were no annoying bugs on facebook. But there’s of course truth to that statement,  your mood does have a lot to do with how you perceive things. The whole glass half empty or half full cliché. But there’s also the fact that some days are just cursed. They just sort of suck. Like today. And none of what happened actually made me all that upset. I wasn’t angry or even that annoyed, but after a while, when it sort of starts piling up on you, it just gets a slight bit irritating. But I kept telling myself to not let it get to me and I pretty much managed to keep my mood in check. In fact that last attempt at generating the URL actually had me laughing. Granted it was a somewhat bitter “oh fuck you facebook” kind of laugh, but it was still a laugh. Because in a way it is actually a little bit funny. A little bit.

So, is there a lesson to be learned here? I have no idea. Maybe the lesson is to try really hard to actually detect that little bit of humor that’s in there because it does feel better when you laugh about it. (And to remember to make sure you package your turmeric really well before sticking it in a parcel that’s supposed to be sent over long distances.) Then again, if tomorrow follows the same pattern I’m not so sure I’ll agree on the “a bit funny” part anymore. All jokes have a tendency to get old and in this case i suspect the expiration date isn’t that long. I suppose the only thing to do is to just take today as a confirmation of the fact that some days are just better than others. But it did help to write about it.