100 Bad Days
There was a moment during the summer when I went to a private training session after an awful day. I looked at Blue Eyes with sad eyes and we recited the words to a song called 100 Bad Days by AJR.
“100 bad days make a hundred good stories, 100 good stories makes me interesting at parties. No, I ain’t scared of you.”
Since that moment, whenever I had a bad day, I would play that song so that I could feel uplifted.
Today was one of those bad days.
Something 2020 has made me crave is stability. I have found that I no longer trust anything so easily: jobs, relationships, friendships… the list could go on. As a performer, I have learned to enjoy the uncertainty of life but recently, I have caught myself up in the loop of wanting something that can make me let out a sigh of relief. 2020 took away my jobs, my boyfriend, my Upper West Side apartment therefore my sense of freedom, and my cat. While I have hit rock bottom many times this year, I did not hit rock bottom today. Instead, I have been able to allow myself to reflect on how I have managed the loss of these major aspects of my life.
Instead of giving you the details of why today was bad, I want to make this entry short and help those who are also struggling with the instability that is our uncertain future.
I started using a bullet journal: Every day I wake up and the first thing I do is write in my journal what I want to accomplish in the day, how I feel in the morning, the important appointments I have during the day, and an inspirational quote. This helps me make myself feel like I am doing something to push myself forward in the future as opposed to consistently feeling like I am doing nothing and everything within one day. Plus, it’s fun to color and draw in it.
I started focusing on what I can control: I have been dealing with a lot of drama these past few months. It use to affect me greatly in college but I realized this year that I can’t control how other people feel about me or what they say about me. I need to stay focused on my own track in life. Some people are just not meant to be a part of that. So I have made it my goal to keep myself out of drama, ignore the haters, and focus on my own life.
Communicate: At this point, my friends are my biggest support system. I am blessed with the fact that all of my friends are older than me with much more life experience than I have. I will say that I have called and texted them far too much during the pandemic but the more my life evolves, they are there with open arms reminding me what I am capable of.
I make my physical needs a priority: What I eat, how hydrated I am, the amount of vitamins I take, and how much I move around are at the top of my list when I am preparing for my day. Whenever my day seems to be out of whack, I always make sure to check-in and see if I have induced a healthy serving of veggies, water, and exercise.
Last, but not least, I have started to make sure that my self-talk is kind: I have a bad habit of being mean to myself. I never feel as if I am good enough. I never congratulate myself for moving ahead in life. I critique every inch of my body. It had gotten to a point that I was so crippled by my depression everything I did was a chore and only the arts could take me out of it. You get no where by speaking negatively to yourself. For so many artists, we speak to ourselves negatively because we are preparing for what casting agents are going to say to us. We want to make sure that we criticize ourselves before anyone else has the chance to but, imagine what you would happen if you spoke to yourself kindly? It’s okay to be critical but if you don’t nourish a plant then it will die. We humans are just like houseplants. We need nourishment.
I hope that this bad day just becomes another day that I can put in one of my plays.
