The short end of the stick

We’ve all had days when the pressure is too much and even the smallest thing makes us feel like we’re about to explode or burst in tears. Say for example, you mess up the last step of your protocol of three days and all work goes to waste. Okay, you tell yourself, I’ll do it again next time. You’ve had that happened too many times, so you sit down to check your email, only to find out that the paper you submitted six months ago got rejected. You read word by word in despair, thinking you will never graduate. Then your best friend calls you to cancel dinner/drinks that night, because she has a test the following day, and to top it all off, your boss needs gives you an extra project to take on because the postdoc is leaving.

What do you do on those instances? Do you go hide in the restroom and cry your eyes out like a little girl? Do you go to the bar to get yourself so drunk that people have to drag go out of there? Do you get yourself a gallon of ice cream and spoonful by spoonful, slowly start to drown your sorrows? Or do you hate the whole world and drive home so enraged that your hands shake as you steer the wheel?

On those days, you question if life is giving you the short end of the stick, if you deserve what’s happening to you, or maybe you should be doing something else with your life.

I don’t know about you, but there are days where I wish I could just mute my feelings and move on. Days where I wish I could just cold-headedly make executive decisions, without my emotions getting in the way. Days where reason would win over every other hormonally-created argument.

When you continuously get the short end of the stick (in any aspect of life), are you motivated by rage or do you feel underestimated? What do you do?