Channeling of Anger works!

Despite the exclamation point's assumed cheeriness, this wasn't so great.  When I said yesterday that it was less harmful to channel anger into sadness, that was ridiculous.  I spent my first day back at work in total doldrums, trying to maybe find a silver lining to working in a basement with one other person (who acts like she hates you). I tried not to get down about J's current job progress, but those two things combined into me somehow working myself into a lather from the time it took to lock my bike in the basement and come through the front door to him sitting on the couch.  I got mad, said some mean things, and then started crying.  J. was patient and I got it all out (I could tell, even in my bad place, that things weren't as bad as they were seeming at that exact second) in time to head over to the gym.  That made me feel a lot better, and when I came home I was in a better mood.

Other things contributing to my strange-feeling first day back were being ignored/rebuffed by two people I said hello to.  One was a faculty member I interact with at my job, and another was a woman I'd had several classes with and similar social circles.  The former gave me a weak and noncommittal little wave (I figured he had the sun in his eyes) and the latter just gave me a look like, "Who the hell are you?"  What's worse than someone who  knows you not recognizing you is thinking that you have done something so horrible that they're pretending they don't know you, and you must be even more horrible for not knowing what that misdeed was.

I ate my lunch (at the same place as my new enemy(?)) and felt a little off.  What's up with this day? When I got to the gym and was stretching for a run, I saw a guy from my cycling team, who I hadn't seen much of since I hurt my knee and it got cold.  He was with his new girlfriend, who I had not met yet.  I gave one of my goofy excited waves (he is a person I can be safely goofy around) and he gave a small, non-committal wave as if he wasn't sure I was waving at him specifically.  At this point, I realized that it was totally self-centered to think that there was a conspiracy against waving at me, perpetrated by the entirety of campus.

When you're walking on a track, but the person you're coming up on is walking
slower,  it feels boastful to pass them, as if to say, "I know we're just walking here,
but I'm walking faster."
Photo from flickr user dbtaylor1959

Still, made me uneasy.  I thought, "Does he have such a jealous girlfriend, maybe, that he didn't want to wave at another lady?" but that is the stuff of bad movies.  I started my run/walk, and at one point was walking behind them, at a slightly fast pace, and there was no way to pass them in a non-awkward way.  As I passed him on his left, I gave a little wave and said hi.  My friend looked completely surprised to see me suddenly walking beside him and said, "A! I wasn't sure who that was waving at me, and thought maybe they were waving at someone behind me!" I laughed and told him it'd happened twice already that day.

"Well, it's probably because of your hair".

My hair? Oooooooooh.  I have very short hair, for about 12 years (or longer than anyone here has ever known me, with one exception) but have been growing it out for fun and because I'm too lazy to cut it.  I've been pulling it back in teeny-tiny pigtails for the last few days, and that was probably what threw people off.  It was pretty funny to me, and just that little bit of laughter put me in a better mood. J. was certainly thankful for that when I got back home.

[UPDATE: Dig my new background! I took macro shots of some of my costume jewelry. Spangles!]