On being miserable

Have you ever been miserable? Just totally and utterly miserable?

Many years ago, I was a Girl Scout. I was probably in 5th grade and our troop was going somewhere to learn about selling cookies...probably the GS Council. Now, I had attended this Saturday training the year before and I was the only one in my year that was going again for some reason. Everyone else was younger. It was a dreary Saturday. I remember not wanting to go, having an uneasy feeling as we pulled out of Forestlawn Elementary's parking lot. I wanted to just jump out of the car. But nonetheless (and probably b/c of my personality to always please and to do what I'm supposed to do), I went.

And I was MISERABLE. It was one of the worse days of my life. I sat through the exact same and rather LONG presentation I had listened to the year before. So very boring. Then coming home, I drove in this older blue station wagon. A mom and her daughter were in the front seat, I was in the back with 2 other Scouts. I didn't know any of these girls b/c they were a year younger than me. And there must have been something going on between the mom and daughter in the front and the girls in the back that I didn't know about. But the 2 girls in the back seat starting singing Beach Boys songs. And they would sing them in parts too..."Ba, ba, ba...Ba, ba-berann." Which got the mother very upset. She turned on the radio to a classical station. The girls would sing louder and the mom would turn up the radio louder and louder. It was so incredibly loud...and I was so utterly miserable. I realized, far too late, that I should have gotten out of the car before it left the school parking lot and walked home.

But that's me. I get into a track and it's hard to jump out of it.

Today, I sat through a meeting here in my house and was totally and utterly miserable. And again, I couldn't pinpoint any one thing in particular. I was just miserable. And I couldn't shake the feeling of being upset for the rest of the afternoon.

A few minutes ago as I was emailing a friend about this miserable feeling, the memory of the trip to the Girl Scout Cookie Sales Presentation flooded my memory. It was a reminder that feeling miserable, for me, can mean that I am in the wrong place.

So while I am still in this track...you can be certain that I'm going to try to find a way to change routes!