Get Down, Funk

I've been in a bit of a funk lately.  Not a funk as in stinky.  A funk as in a general feeling of malaise.  It's not Winston Churchill's version, which he called his Black Dog.  It's more like a Gray Duck, just floating along beside me.   I am not normally the sort of person who is always chipper, always smiling.  I tend to be neutral most of the time.  I'm not Tigger, but I'm not Eeyore, either.  I just feel sort of  'meh' about everything right now. 

Maybe it is just the time of the year, the lack of warmth and sunlight that is part of winter.  I seem to have the most funks during the winter months.  It could also be one of those hormonal roller coasters that women often find themselves riding.

Or it could just be that I'm under stress.

I feel stressed by a number of recent happenings, including having to put one of my cats to sleep(I'll talk about that in another post, when I can type without bawling my head off).  It's like dropping marbles into a cup with water in it; sooner or later the water is displaced by the marbles and overflows the cup.  Each tiny stressor by itself may be easy to deal with, but when they all pile on, it's an overwhelming, downhill slide.  Stressors don't tend to show up as loners, either.  They often show up in ravening packs, to chew you up in small bites.  Death by a thousand bites.

I've been told that stress is a choice, and that if I can't deal with it now, it's sure not going to get better.  After I calmed down, I thought about it.   Is stress really a choice?   Do I have a choice to say that I'd rather not have a root canal?  Yes, but then I have to deal with the completely mind numbing pain, the costs of oral surgery, and several other consequences.   Technically, those are choices, true.  However, I'm really only trading one stressor for another. How is that a good thing?

I've also been told that I can choose my attitude, and that is true.  I can choose to be positive.  If I had the most positive attitude on the planet, would I feel less stressed?  Take that root canal--would it be any less painful if I were cheerful about it?  Somehow, I don't think so.  Unless the dentist has some really good drugs that I don't know about. 

I know how to deal with funks. I try to get a little more sleep, or I so some yoga, or I may take my son out and go someplace fun.  I just have to ride it out.  There's really only one cure for funks, and that is time.  And maybe a little sunshine.