Disgruntlemint

"You need to control your anger, Altoid!"

"This is unreasonable, the way you lose your temper at random and as often as you do. There's no way to predict what COULD make you angry. One day it could be the neighbor's dog barking too loud, the other day it could be the rains!"

"Geeez, Altoid- you cant get angry over such silly things...."

And so on and so forth. Yes, enough for one to conclude that perhaps Altoid might need some anger management classes.

While I will admit that I do lose my temper, in my mind, you see, its all justified. There is a reason for my outburst- every time, all the time :D. Be that as it may, I think what happens is that I show my anger at people or things unrelated to the actualy cause or source of anger. This morning and the entire day's events have put me in a cranky mood for the rest of the day, a perfect example for the case above. This in turn cascades on to bursts of rage which I distribute quite randomly to people around me. Yes, Taureans are known to be generous.

What happened was this. For 3 days now, rather nights, I have been asked by a store owner to call him after 10pm to remind him to set aside empty packing boxes for my upcoming move. So every night I call Sam and remind him and he in turn tells me to stop by at 8am the next morning to pick them up. 8am finds me scouring the store in search of Sam who gets paged and still doesnt show up. After about 45 mins of frantic searching, I find Sam who tells me he forgot to set aside boxes. "Can you call me tonight and remind me so you can pick up some tomorrow?" he asks politely. Since I'm the one asking for a favour, I suck it up and oblige.

This ritual has gone on for 3 days. So today at 9am, when I should have been at work, I am getting Sam paged for the 10 time. Wonder of wonder, he shows up with a cart full of empty boxes. *delighted look on my face*. As I wheel the cart out of the store, I am stopped at the main door by the Manager. "I am sorry Ma'am, you are not allowed to take these boxes out....". "But Sam gave them to me" I say. "Yes, I will talk to Sam, but you cannot take these out!" and he grabs the cart away. Long story short, after another 30 mins Sam comes up sheepishly to tell me to come around on Saturday and continue with the drama all over again.

After a polite smile(I still DO need them d**** boxes), I walk out and drive to work.

I log in see a work pile as tall as I am. To top it, I have missed a meeting and some frikking updates need to be installed in the laptop which in turn requests a reboot. It took 10 mins to boot in the first place!! Some paperwork that should have been done 3 weeks ago is just getting stalled for no apparent reason. Daily followup just isnt cutting it. Can I do anything about it?-Nada. I have to wait for the stars to line up and the person in charge to sign. Some days I just tempted to land at this person's office and strangle him with the telephone cord. (One anger management test asks innocently if I feel homicidal when I am angry...what do YOU think?).

Arghhhhhhhhhh!

So anyway, these tips that one finds to get out of bad moods suggest that one think about something funny or some pleasant vacation or something that takes one's mind off the current frustrations.
My question is usually when one is in a bad mood, one flares because there are too many things going on that need to be dealt with and hence adds to the stress right? How is one supposed to take an hour off to dream of such pleasant thoughts?

Yes yes, yoga, meditation etc etc.... I get it. You cant change the world, the only person you can change is yourself. Very true. I am sure I am quite unbearable when I am angry- heck sometimes I cant put up with my own self. I can see how irrational my outbursts are....

Huh? How did I get rid of my bad mood, you ask?

I just yelled at a handful of people, sulked, shed a few tears and I think the anger has abated now. I've heard "bull in a china shop" is an apt phrase for angry Taureans.