Pick Up The Phone

I was having a day yesterday.  Not a good day and not a bad day, just a day.  It could have gone either way.  I didn't have a lot of tolerance for anything and I could feel the slipperiness of my mood, like I was standing on an icy sidewalk.  I had an attitude teed up and ready to go and for no good reason, actually.  Everything was fine except for the usual general free-floating anxiety that is often around, exacerbated by social isolation and the fact that I'm not getting to do exactly what I want to do exactly when I want to do it.  As I've droned on and on about I'm a dude with a nature and a nurture that tends toward negativity and pessimism.

I took a call from one of my buddies in AA and we shot the shit about nothing in particular.  I could tell he was in a good mood as we kicked around ideas, talked about our spouses and friends and like, topics that, if we chose, could have devolved into a bitching session.  My friend had a good attitude about everything and it buoyed me up, allowed me to step off the icy sidewalk and into a warm house.

I kept saying: "See?  That's solution-based stuff."  I could see that he was talking the optimistic, positive view about everything.  While I often do this - not always.  This is why we pick up the phone.  You don't have to have a big problem or a complicated issue to discuss.  You call and someone gets helped.  Frequently both people get helped so pick up the phone!

At the end I did say: "OK, I've had just about enough of all this happy solution-based shit so I'm going to hang up now."