Sometimes, life feels hard. We are pulled from pillar to post. We jump from challenge to challenge. We go along with it because we feel we have to. We don’t necessarily like it. We don’t necessarily know how to deal with it. We simply know that we feel we have to deal with it.

I felt like this a few weeks ago. I had deadlines, a day packed with meetings, people coming to me for other issues, and my phone ringing crazily. That was just at work.

Then the school rang me. Without warning, I found myself trying to navigate anger. I wanted to use it constructively and resourcefully to reasonably arrive at an outcome. I did it. I don’t know how. We reached an outcome that worked for our daughter. Thank goodness.

It felt like I didn’t get to take a breath. It felt like everything I knew about how to deal with one situation wasn’t necessarily useful in another.

Later that day, I remember thinking “Today has really been a crappy day”.

I started to think about what it means to have a crappy day. In my case, it was being pulled from pillar to post, being required to change context on the fly (talking to a customer is different to talking to a peer, which is different to talking to a school about an incident that has resulted in a child not going to school),

When I zoomed in further, my crappy day was about not feeling immediately equipped to deal with each challenge as it arose. My crappy day was about being pushed to my limits and feeling as though I had to learn how to cope with the challenges. I had to learn new ways of taking action in each moment.

Although I had it within me to deal with each moment, on a crappy day it didn’t feel immediately obvious or available to me. I was re-engineering old learning and taking on new learning on the fly, which was creating uncertainty and doubt. It felt challenging, unfamiliar and not entirely safe.

That’s when I had an ah-ha moment.

I mostly feel as though I have life under control, yet sometimes things pop up and they feel beyond me. During those times, it would be nice to have someone I could speak to who could give me a hint about what to do, or at least listen to my challenges.

It occurred to me that there must be other people out in the world who feel like that.

And that is how the Crappy Day Clinic Facebook Group started. It’s a space for people to be themselves, and share their experiences and learning with others. It’s free and it’s welcoming and you’re invited. Feel free to pop on over and join us!