Dealing with Stress

I'd be the first to admit I don't handle stress well at all, and the oddest things can stress me out. Putting away my change at the grocery store? I feel like I'm holding up everybody and all eyes are on me. If I wait to get away from the checking line to do it, I still feel like all eyes are on me. The feeling I look nervous itself is a aggravates the stress. Sometimes I can't get my hands to work and I just have to stuff bills, metal and receipt into my pocket and find a private place to sort it out.

[More beneath the crack]




There are other things. Reading my work at the writers' group causes my mouth to go completely dry 2-3 times over a 12-minute reading. Misplacing an item has put me into day or week long depressions before, not so much now, though. And if the stress builds up too much, I'll make stupid errors on the simplest things. As that aggravates things, then I'll just become completely paralyzed followed by a depression. If ever I need be reminded why I'm unemployable, an episode like that will do it. (I'm self-employed, thank you, and extremely underpaid by my cheapskate boss.) I've mentioned before, people who say I should get a job are usually the same sorts of people who demand I be fired. 

Today, I've begun to meditate to get a handle on this. Stressing too much is part of being bipolar, even if I can point to some specific traumas. Part of that syndrome is a feeling of futility, which is why I've always dismissed meditation as something that doesn't work, for no good reason.

So, this morning I went to a Zen website to get some basic meditation advice.

I'm making a few other major and minor changes. I've now taken to standing while I write. When I get tired and sit, I put a timer on it. (You can download some good, virus free, and and no-cost programs like timers from softpedia.com) Sitting is terrible for you, and I still think I haven't recovered from my final sit-all-day job.

And I have to lose weight. So, I'm becoming vegan. Since I know nothing about nutrition, I'm starting that in a month.

Also, a major source of stress for me is socio-political-economic. I'd call it environmental stress. The major one is I can't believe this country is doing nothing about Global Warming after the dire warnings, and now that California is ready to blow away rather than fall into sea from drought. Some communities have less than forty-five days (uh, a month by now) of drinking water left. If there's no water to tap, those people are going to have to be relocated. Thing is, the sea level rising may be the least of our problems with it.


Truth is stranger than science fiction. I don't think any SF writers in the 60s and 70s imagined that people, in the face of a global emergency would be as hard-headed ignorant as Global Warming deniers. (I refuse to dumb it down for them by using the term "climate change." They still won't believe it. More about this in an upcoming entry.

So, I'm taking time now to stop just complaining about it and become politically active. I'll let you know how that turns out.