a thing no one told me about being an adult:
I thought it would be like school, where the hard part is like, doing the things. the hardest part of having a job isn’t doing the things, it’s that you have to do the things and be in a good mood about it all the time.
being in a bad mood is actually just really bad: you snap at people or find ways to criticize them. you do things to increase your own status at the expense of others because you don’t feel sufficiently secure. you’re unexcited and pessimistic and that comes across and makes other people feel that way too.
(I guess it’s true when you’re a kid too, that bad moods are infectious. I think the differences are that for one, the more people are depending on you the more power your emotions have; and for another, the situations in which this is really relevant are when you’re working together with a group of people toward some common goal.)
all this means that it’s really valuable to find ways to be genuinely happy, if you can. but it also means that the times when you can’t–and there will always be times–taking a deep breath and putting on a brave face and smiling anyway is literally your job.