A lot of my friends ask me how I manage to stay happy all the time.  

(Big secret: It isn’t all the time.)  

The times I don’t feel up to snuff to face the day, I stay in bed/under my headphones/quiet in general, until it passes which, thankfully, comes swiftly. I suppose it’s the ‘swiftly’ part they don’t understand. I know that part of it was my upbringing. My mom didn’t believe in feeling sorry for yourself any longer than 24 hours. And my dad? My dad didn’t believe in it at all. “Walk it off,” he would say, to everything from falls to heartbreaks. Okay, maybe not heartbreak, but many intangible things, like laziness.  

I always believe that you can “Fake it til you make it,” meaning you imagine something, you write about something, you dress a certain way, until that thing comes to fruition.  

I may not be happy all the time, but when I realize I need to snap out of it, I have a lot of things that can help cheer me up.  

I can also ask for help. This is a step that is sometimes hard for me, but some of my friends are very helpful. I can just text them ” Well, this has been a shite week; tell me 5 good things about your life,” and they will give me an avalanche of good. Or, offer to bake me a cookie to make up for it. Having strong, positive friends (and not negative people or emotional vampires) helps in ways no words could describe.   

Something I think about, other than Mark Twain’s quote about naked people, is “dress for the job you want, not what you have.”  

Now, ladies, unless you would like a job in the after-hours gentleman’s club department, please do NOT wear a tank top, half-shirt, overly tight wiggle dress to an interview. I don’t care if you live on the surface of the sun (believe me, Phoenix in July is close enough), no overly revealing clothing. likewise gentlemen, no tank tops, sports jerseys, undershirts, jeans or flip-flops. There are times and places for all these things, and it is not the 20 minutes someone is asking you whether you follow direction well.  

But I digress. Clothes make me a bit irritated in the right/wrong/grey area.  

Long story short: smile (even to pull yourself out of a rut when you’re not feeling it), clean up (take a shower and imagine your blahs floating down the drain), and make a playlist of your favorite upbeat songs and shake the loose ends free.