How to Slay a Bad Day

Having worked from home for over six years, shit has not always been easy. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times…work from home life is often glamorized. I think COVID-19 has a lot of people rethinking the concept of “retiring” their spouse after making it big in direct sales.

Yet, since I’ve worked from home for quite some time as a professional writer and editor, I’ve had some fucking awesome days and some shitty ones. I mean, life doesn’t become all sunshine and unicorns just because you no longer work for “the man.” In fact, because there’s no separating work from home, you must know how to slay a bad day. Here’s what I do to make shit suck a little less.

Related: How to Become a Successful Freelancer: Get on Team You

Walk Away from That Email

If it’s a crabby client, remote colleague, or otherwise shitty email that’s fucking up your day, just walk away from it. Email is a tool.

1. You are not required to respond immediately.
2. Turn off your email notifications if you’re using Outlook or another email program on your computer.
3. Turn off the noise your cell phone makes when you get an email.
4. Stop checking your email every five minutes. Fun fact – you probably waste four hours a day on email.

Seriously…give yourself a fucking break. I don’t respond to most emails right away. I have shit to do.

Stay Off Social Media

Social media has a way of making a bad day worse unless you’re self-disciplined enough to just look at puppy videos… That “debate” that really isn’t debate because you can’t really debate with idiots will still be there later…but seriously, just stop talking to them and turn off your notifications.

1. You do not need the last word.
2. You do not need constant news updates unless it is storm season in your state.
3. You do not need 24/7 social media unless it is your literal paying job to fucking be on social media. Even then, you know as well as I do that you use a scheduler for social media posts and you can even use it to check replies. So….leave your personal social media alone.

Take Three Minutes and Just…Breathe

You’re human…just like me. We all have bad days. So, take three minutes to sit down and just breathe. If the weather is nice, go outside and breathe. Or just sit in the floor…even if you have kids or pets (and don’t take your shitty mood out on them; put yourself in their shoes). Lock yourself in the bathroom if necessary and if that’s safe to do (depending on the age and abilities of your children). Take three minutes and go calm down. Do it periodically throughout the day.

Look for the Good

Do I realize how lame I sound? Yes. Do I care? No. Here’s why I say this…

When you have a bad day, you’ll get your pocket or belt loop or headphone wires stuck on the door…you’ll stub your toe…everything you can possibly imagine will add to your shitty mood. Why? Because you’re focused on the shitty stuff…some people call it manifestation or the law of attraction. Whatever. You notice all the shit happening because it’s where your focus is placed.

And it blows. Because shit rolls downhill. It makes hard to see the good. Sometimes, it makes it really, really hard. Look for it anyway…because once you start finding it, your day starts to improve. It makes a bad day less shittastic.

Toss It in the Fuck It Bucket & Move On

I’ve had days that I’ve just deemed a total wash and said fuck it…decided to embrace the freedom of working from home and do whatever the fuck I want to do and start new the next day. This isn’t something I ever advocate doing on a daily basis because when you work from home, it requires serious amounts of self-discipline because there’s no one telling you what to do and when to do it…everything, and I mean everything, is on you.

Yet, every now and again there are days when I’m just like well, this is bull shit and I’m just gonna start over tomorrow. And so I spend the rest of the day just doing whatever as long as I don’t have any hard deadlines (I generally work well ahead of my deadlines).

The key to making this tip work is to get up the next day without deciding it’s going to be a shitty day like the day before. You must get up and decide it’s going to be better than the day before. And find a way to make it better. Personal responsibility is one of the most effective ways to gain power over your life and the best possible tool to use in slaying a bad day.

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