31 Days of Blogging, Day 6: The Distraction

You know the days when you're so stuck with one sad/scary thought all day, or many days, and you know that you just need to snap out of it at once? Maybe you don't. I just know, anyway, because that happens to me lots of time. An ugly thought will sometimes stick itself merrily in my brain, refusing to budge. After an hour or so, I will usually tell myself to "snap out of it". Only, it is never easy. (Maybe I am just not good with snapping out of anything.) However, it can be done. Sometimes.

One good way to get an ugly thought out of your mind, I happily report, is by thinking of a happy thought. Ha! The hard part is, fabricating a happy thought is sometimes tiring when you've been bogged down by the ugly thought for days. As I often lack the energy to create a really, really happy thought with an ugly thought stuck in my brain, I just use my distraction.

You see, a distraction does not have to be a happy thought. You can think of a face cream, for instance. I do it quite often. I read the ingredients of many face creams, to the point where I can almost memorize them by heart. I am well aware that almost all over-the-counter face creams share the same ingredients, so it is very amusing that each cream claims to be the secret to youthful skin/clearer skin/younger looking skin/anything.

Still, I find them very adorable. Face creams, I mean, not the claims that they make. I love the jars, the colours, the textures of them. And the promise that after just a week of usage, you'll wake up with a new face all youthful/clear/young/anything. And of course, I buy them from time to time.

Now. How do you use this kind of distraction? I mentioned it could help chase away ugly thoughts from inside your brain. Here is how you do it: when you feel that tinge of sadness, when an ugly and sad thought forms inside you, and when you recognize it gets bigger, almost swallowing you from the inside, think of one face cream, let's call it Face Cream A. Think of its TV commercial. Can you remember its tagline? Then you search for it on the internet, and read all of its ingredients. Those ingredients may be written in Latin or Greek or Kazumbwa (e.g: Myristic Acid, Decyl Glucoside) which make them even more useful as a distraction.

After that, think of another face cream, let's call it Face Cream B, and google its ingredients. This will help to prevent tears from forming in your eyes. Next, compare the ingredients of Face Cream A and B. How many of them are the same?

You see, now you're thinking that the two creams are almost the same, and you have been officially distracted. Your ugly thought has been pushed aside a bit, by the thoughts about Face Cream A and B.

Oh, oh. What if, after this, you're still sad and bothered, that ugly thought still find ways to spread in your brain? What if you start thinking of Face Cream C and D, and still you're consumed with grief, the distraction cannot compete with the sadness? I am sad to say that this may happen too.

That is precisely why I know all the ingredients of almost all over-the-counter face creams.