Can We Choose to Be Happy?

I discovered something this week, or maybe I should say I relearned something this week. Sometimes, I choose to let outside influences determine my mood. But it doesn’t need to be that way. In the midst of all the seemingly compounding stress of my day job, I found myself growing quite frustrated. In fact, the amount of projects sitting on my plate, for me and my group to complete, seems to grow each day. Changes always happen. As I felt myself growing more and more upset at the workload, expectations, and difficulties my day job brings, I had to remind myself that, while those deadlines and expectations are important, they don’t have to define my mood.

When I was younger, my grandmother reminded me of that type of thought often. Stress, challenges, and changes always come. They’re part of life. Nothing I do will alleviate all of them, but allowing them to determine my mood for the day will make me a rotten person to be around. Trust me, I’ve been deep in that hole in years past. I’m doing my best to stay out of it.

After I remembered that, I did my best to ignore the possible outcomes of not accomplishing the tasks I’m charged with. They may happen, but I choose not to let that slow me down. As long as I do my best and approach the challenges calmly, things will come together. Maybe they’ll take longer. Maybe the priorities will change. Maybe someone else’s difficulties will be dumped on my plate to handle. It doesn’t have to bring my mood down.

Sometimes, I have to step away, both literally and mentally. During my workday, my lunchbreak is good writing time. It is my escape from the stress of the morning, and in a way, it refreshes me for the afternoon’s stress. In the evenings, I write more and read. That is something I enjoy, and it helps me keep a good mood.

Life is full of challenges, sometimes. I choose to be happy, regardless of the looming deadlines. I choose to be happy, regardless of the impossibility of the added tasks and my workload. I choose to be happy even when everything seems to be falling apart. I’ll be happy in spite of all of those challenges.

Speaking of writing, check out my next book, Dissonance, is out as a preorder on Amazon Kindle until September 3, 2021. That’s just three weeks away. I’d love a few more preorders. I’m doing some finishing touches on its cover, and making a minor adjustment to the ending. In that book, time travel is tearing the world apart, and only those that sense the resonance can feel the changes. Wyatt, Brooke, Aldan, Jeremy, and Avery, have to determine who to trust as they look for the source of the changes. It is a sequel to Resonance, which is my best performing book on Amazon, so far.

My most recent book, an epic fantasy titled, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, was a fun book to write. It is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.

If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.

If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.

If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.