Today, it might have helped if I had an idea how I was feeling at the start rather than at the end. Today, I was angry.
If I could intellectualize the first cause of my overall mood through this last day in the same way I thoroughly logically justified the resulting emotional reactions, it wouldn't help much. Pinpointing the root wouldn't go any distance towards making my rationalizations as morally justified as they seemed at the time. And I doubt it would stop me from having another poor day some time in the future. Unfortunately, I woke up in a bad mood and didn't notice until it was over. That sucks. But there is one very important thing I can take away from today.
Things which should have made me at worst perturbed angered me. I felt the warmth of the top of my legs, close against my jeans. My heart sped up and I felt it beat down to my fingertips. And once I calmed down a little, I found I had warmed up just enough to sweat under my shirt. Given my tendencies to display emotion like a stoplight, I probably flushed entirely red a few times. I was motivated to unwise action from anger, and that is unusual.
Being angry may not seem that novel, but if you've had the misfortune of experiencing one of my poor moods, you likely observed a passive aggressive display so ridiculously indirect and sesquipedalian, it was likely more unpleasant in its forced sentences than it was in its veiled insults. As a rule, I don't get angry. When irritated, I have a practiced routine of being an irritating jackass, or, should I need more passive to match the growing aggressive, brooding becomes the course of action.
This reaction mechanism goes back to when I was a stubborn, self-involved, petulant child — a phase that lasted somewhere around 10 years, depending on your measurement method. As that kid, I got angry a lot. When I was angry, I was often violent.
In high school, I had a great deal more time to sit inside my head, and a little more appreciation for the effect I had on others around me. I thought back on my slightly younger times. Recalling my actions mortified and frightened me in equal degrees. What a short distance away I had to get from myself to find me so completely alien. I was a small child, but there's an amazing amount of damage even a child can cause on the world around him. I became afraid of repeating those actions, and, by consequence, afraid of being angry.
It's admirable to culture calmness. Anger isn't so much a result of managing a reaction — once you're at a reaction point, you are already angry. Reducing anger, for me, is about analyzing reflexive emotional reactions when dispassionately removed from the situation, so as to shape my reflexes at a later time. It's also complete bull to imagine I'm going to shape every emotional twitch I might have. And thus my outlet has been snark and sullenness.
And, at the risk of repeating myself, today I got angry. I overreacted to small things and was tempted to exhibit these overreactions plainly. I had to stop, rationally tell myself I was being stupid, and do my job at least once. At least one expletive made its way out from my fingers which wouldn't have normally. And nothing got punched, and nothing shattered. And, at the end of the day, nothing was broken except my temporary misanthropy.
I have this maxim I like to live by. I'm making decent progress as a human being when I think back to myself two years ago and think that he was a right bastard. I think you can already see some of the history for that, but the process came even earlier. Seldom am I disappointed in regards to my maxim. Two years worth of mistakes makes for one very large pool for potential improvement. I was only reminded this last week of my few regrets, the handful of items I could not even justify as lessons learned. I marveled that the villain behind those acts is me. I could not imagine acting like I did two years ago, let alone fifteen.
I walked a lot more than a normal day, refocusing myself. A few times I separated myself from human interaction until I calmed down. I learned I can get by alright being angry. I'm not sure, given the choice, I'd prefer angry over sullen. However, if I compare a day of being an overly-forward idiot versus a week-long downward spiral, I think the first one wins. Apologies to those who had to bear the negative effects of my under-restrained self control.