WP Daily Prompt: What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

Artist Unknown

When I am being flooded with negative feelings, either my own or those feelings that some people seem to enjoy putting on others I clean my brain.

My first go to is this- I put on my headphones and I play music from a list I tagged ” 78″.

I don’t abuse “78” . I don’t listen to it for fun, I don’t use it to fill in empty space. I listen to it when I need to rewrite my point of view.  ” 78 ” has songs like ” New York Groove ” by Ace Frehley, ” Lido Shuffle ” by Boz Skaggs and  the new version ” Let Me Be There ” by Olivia Newton John   in a duet with John Farnham.

The funny thing is, I didn’t really like these particular songs when they first came out. They sort of grew on me.

If my music doesn’t help, I put my dog on his leash and we go out and walk, if we are lucky we run into other dog walkers and when I see how friendly and happy and well received by people and other dogs  Hamish is I get a boost. In fact, it makes me feel pretty darn happy.

And then if those things only get me halfway home, I go to my blog and I read my work.

Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good, but I know that there are times when I wrote  those stories, posts and poems  that  my life was not just in ruins, it was in the process of burning itself straight to the ground- and there it is evidence that through all of that I wrote something and that NOTHING could stop me from doing something I really love to do.

There you have it, that’s how I get rid of my negative feelings.