Positively Negative

I’ve been spending years trying to make people laugh and be happy. I really do try to make the people around me smile. When I was little I had to be the center of attention, as I got older it just turned into this exhaustive act in my 20’s. now that I’m in my 30’s I have decided to start making me happy, I think I’m going to start putting me number one for a bit. This is acutely timed since I’m leaving the country for the third time in 6 years. I’m what I like to call positively negative, I try very hard to be positive and happy, outgoing and funny, it’s just not what my nature is. I’m not a very pleasant person naturally but I try very hard to be. That’s not to say I don’t think I have a good heart, don’t for one second think I believe myself to be a bad person. At one time I might have but these days I know I have a good heart, it’s just that smiling at strangers and being nice when you’re frustrated have never been my go to skills. Not everyone can be a truly positive person, it’s that whole yin and yang thing, for every Mother Theresa there’s a Jeffrey Dahmer. I’m certainly not a Dahmer but you get the point, for every bubbly person there is another one out there who can’t stand bubbly. They say it’s the thought that counts but I think sometimes it has to be the action that counts. If you’re having a bad day and I crap all over it that’s much worse than me making you feel better all the while screaming bloody murderous rages in my own head. I choose to be positively negative, a naturally negative person behaving positively. They have found in scientific studies that just the act of smiling can make you feel better, even if you force it on yourself. We are social creatures designed to be amongst one another, when people are alone for long periods of time they talk to themselves because the sound of voices is calming to the brain. So now you know if you see someone smiling like a goofball and talking to themselves (me) they are just doing their dead level best to prevent a meltdown. My prescription to stay positively negative is spend time in the sun, smile, talk to people, and hope that eventually I will turn into a positively positive person. Until I am a positive person I can keep myself smiling by remembering a quote, “A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”  ~Herm Albright