Moody

The philosopher Heidegger theorized that the primary way that we experience the world isn't through our vision, or our hearing, or any other sense perception. We experience the world around us first and foremost through our mood. That makes sense to me; think about. When you're bored, what is it that bores you? The things you do are boring. The people you're around you are boring. Everything in your life at that point is boring. And it isn't that these things aren't fun, or that the people aren't interesting; it's that your bored mood makes you perceive them as boring. The world is conditioned by the mood we're in.

It seems to be the case from my experience tonight as well. My mood switched from a respectably good mood to a cranky-nothing's-cheering-me-up mood, and I can't explain it in the least. Two things combined set me off, and neither of which were really that big a deal. 1) A table wanted to move because people were going in and out the door and they were cold. The way they went about asking was kind of whiny, but I understand their desire to move. 2) My apple cobblers took longer than they should've to come up, and no one told me when they did. Again, neither of those things should've been that big a deal, but they just flipped a switch and I got pissy. And I stayed pissy for probably an hour or so before I finally came back up out of it, but while I was angry and bitter, everything only served to irritate me further.

I think part of the reason that I was bitter is because I knew I had no reason to be. I knew that little things had sent me over the edge, and I was mad at myself for letting it happen. My original title of this post was going to be "What stresses you out?" because work is truly the only thing that gets me fired up at all. Traffic used to, and I guess it sometimes still does, but since I've toned down my rambunctious driving habits, it's not as big of a deal. So, work stresses me out; am I alone in this? Is there anyone out there that actually enjoys their job? I'd like to think that it is possible to do so, but past experience has taught me that it's easy for me to think that something would be fun or easy because I don't understand all the aspects of it. For example, until recently I was dead-set on being a philosophy/religion professor. The idea isn't out of the question, but I've started to consider that there might be other things I'm better suited for. Time will tell on that. But, as much as I think I'd like to be a professor, I have to admit that there's a lot about the profession I don't know, a lot of nuiances that I might not realize, that could still make the job stress me out. Maybe all of my coworkers would be nuts, or I'd be overwhelmed with the amount of papers to grade, or I'd have a hard-case for a dean, or whatever. I'm not using these as excuses to not teach; I'm just wondering if there is such a thing as a perfect job. Any guesses?