How quickly can you turn around?

My mood can change on a dime, most of the time. It doesn’t take much to swing me from happy to sad or back again, most of the time, but I think that’s because of a tendency to stay fairly centered; if my emotions are a pendulum, I’ll swing back and forth, but for the main, my arc is a small one. (Not that I won’t react strongly during the rocking, certainly! I have absolutely no “poker face,” so when I’m pleased or ticked, people around me will know.) If extrinsic factors, on the other hand, knock me for a loop and push my pendulum far from equilibrium, I will swing back (I joke that my attention span and memory aren’t long enough to hold a grudge), but of course it’s going to take longer.

I think all that is fairly typical, isn’t it? Barring chemical imbalances and issues of the psyche, the gently swaying pendulum is part and parcel of the human condition.

But this is why I can’t stand mornings where people around me start pushing hard, right off the bat. Mornings are typically even for me: wake feeling neutral, and the initial experiences of the day – frequently a run, or else breakfast with Eric – are key in deciding the day. And then…I have to wake Sam. This is often where things go downhill, as today. He needed a shower. He didn’t want a shower. Cue drama. Now, Sam’s like me, in that he swings back quickly and easily, so by the time his shower was done, he was in a grand mood! (Oh, hey there, Red Licorice shower gel!) But his personal olfactory cure, and the subsequent and unprompted apologies for his rudeness, aren’t good enough to pull me back to center quite yet.

It’s not Sam, though. It’s that I didn’t begin at neutral today. I’ve been operating from the sad end of the arc since last night, when Eric told me he’d be going away again soon, for another week. For some reason, it whammed me hard, and even a shared sushi roll didn’t save me after that. I initially blamed my upset on the fact that his trip will overlap a 22-mile run of mine, which is definitely problematic, but it’s a cop-out. It’s easy to let myself get angry about the details; it keeps me from focusing on the bigger picture, which is how much it hurts when he’s gone.

Better to roll my eyes and complain about reshuffling a running schedule. Calendars are pragmatic things.