I’m not in the best of moods right now. I’m pissed at my best friend and being rather mean to him because of it.

When I first got angry at him this morning, I decided to pixel something to distract myself. That didn’t work out so well. Nothing looked good, and I kept starting over. All I could think about was how mad I was.

Eventually I did come up with something to pixel, and it came out rather well. The first time I zoomed out to see how it was looking, I actually smiled. I was finally distracted. However, as soon as I realized that I smiled, I was back to my pissed off, set-jawed self.

I guess I wasn’t distracted enough.

This past Wednesday, my mom and I had a huge fight in the morning before school while I was eating breakfast. She said some extremely hurtful things to me, and I bawled my eyes out.

When I got to school, the first thing I did was to go into the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror, and smile. They say that smiling actually releases chemicals that makes you happier, or something like that. I stood there for probably about a minute smiling and telling myself how “today is going to be a good day”. I slapped my cheeks a bit too, until I realized it hurt.

Despite my little exercise in front of the mirror, the day still started out on a pretty rough note. I had yearbook first hour, so I pretty much just sat around and did nothing, since there was not really anything to do. Of course, that meant that I had a rather long time to stew some more. I sank deeper into my personal little hole of misery.

Second hour I had French, and during that class I had to sit a paper two exam, meaning I would have ninety minutes to write at least 400 words. I did not want to do that in my current state.

I wallowed in my despair for ten more minutes before class started, and then it came time to sit the exam. I read the prompts, chose the one I wanted to write about, got out some paper, and sat there about to cry. Tears rushed to my eyes. “No. I can’t cry. I have to write this paper. I can cry afterwards,” I thought to myself.

You know what? That hour and a half of writing was bliss. The prompt I chose said approximately the following (in French of course): “You recently had an interview for a job that you really wanted. To your surprise, you did not get the job. Evaluate this experience in a diary entry.”

Instead of thinking about myself and my own problems during those ninety minutes, I got to be someone else. I got to immerse myself in her petty problems instead of my own (which were less petty, I daresay). I wrote for as long as I could. I wrote not because I needed to reach 400 words, which I reached easily, but because I realized what the exam was doing for me. My morning had been pushed to the back of my mind, and it was wonderful. Bliss, like I said.

It’s too bad pixeling couldn’t do that for me this morning.