focus on the positive

it's true what rosa says...and what I try to tell myself all the time (without successful absorbtion, it seems) : one has to focus on the here and now...and one has to focus on the negative.
.... (oh my Goodness, Freudian slip...I mean POSITIVE! ;)

Anyway, I really need to adjust my thinking. I don't want to regret whole phases of my life. I want to look back and say this was good, or this was tough, but I made the best out of it and let's see what I learned from it.

I don't want to be in this constant state of complaint.

I listened to this podcast (one of the many I subscribe to: NPR - Most E-mailed Stories), and there was a story about a 15-year old girl in some African mountain village, who was trying to make it through school, orphaned, with two little sisters to take care of, no electricity, most of her extended family wiped out by AIDS, and the village men preying on her and her sisters every night,..trying to get into the house.

I mean - honestly - what the f*ck am I complaining about?????

I should be grateful every minute of the day. Even this very minute that I am laying in bed with cramps out of this world. I should focus on the positive and say...well you might have debilitating cramps but

a) you have painkillers

b) you can take off from work

c) you have work you can take off from

d) you are not an orphan (ok. that really doesn't relate here, but I am grateful for this fact) and

e) you ARE having cramps (which means I am having my period, which means I am not pregnant with yet another child).


I am grateful.
and, yet, I am slightly depressed at the moment.
I guess, it really is the hormonal crap (i.e. period-related).

You know, and I realized...that study I recently heard about seems to be true: women are attracted to more manly men 2 weeks before their period and then to more nurturing looking guys (more feminine traits?) just a few days before they come down with their days.
I have to double-check. But I made a point to observe and control the study this month...and I just (today) caught myself checking out some skinny, bearded, intellectual, all-blackandwrinkly-wearing-clothes guy. ;)

I am signing off with a picture I took the other day (at the lake of Constance).