A Little Bit of Stress Relief

Write about it.

That's one thing that you're supposed to do to relieve stress. Honestly, I need to do something. I've tried exercise and yoga and everything else I can possibly consider short of giving up sugar - which I tried to try but it was more stressful than the stress.

I know I do this freak-out over stress thing a lot. I really want a simple life where I don't do this constantly. But lately...oh, lately...it's just building and building and building.

Stress #1: The Job

I get yelled at almost every day at work. I do the work of 3 people and I do it badly. I'm just overwhelmed. It's almost not worth starting a project or phone call because in the course of attempting I'll be bombarded with at least 3 more tasks. I work with difficult people who have decided I am the poster child of their discontent. I lay in bed each morning trying to talk myself into arriving at work sometime before 9am and then spend six hours reminding myself that I'm supposed to work for 9 hours each day. If I'm lucky, I survive for six. Then the stress drives me out of the building.

Here's a case in point: I agreed 6 months ago to participate in a diet-controlled research study. I was aware that I'd be the primary investigator and that the project would take a significant amount of time. So, I agreed to accept 2 subjects. While I was in Florida, the doctor in charge of the project called the company and increased our number to 10! Since when was TWO equal to TEN! She sent me an email while I was on vacation. I didn't read it. Then she called me to yell at me for not doing as she told me in the email! I. Was. On. Vacation. I do not check my email on vacation. Vacation is where I go to get away from email demands. But, no, I was in trouble for being on vacation. So, I told her I can't do TEN subjects. She lectured me for 5 minutes on how I need to learn to accept responsibility and follow-through on my commitments. TWO was my commitment. Not TEN. TWO. But I have no formal authority and my opinion does not matter. TEN are enrolled and I have no say. Nothing to do but cry and try and screw up. Again. Because no one can do the amount of work I've been given. I spoke to my manager and she suggested I learn to be assertive. Right. Because all this time I've been a shrinking violet. The only thing the doctors hate more than my ineptitude is my attitude. I hate my job. I love my work but hate my job.

Stress #2: The UCLA

Okay. Seriously. It takes work to teach as badly as our professors. They must spend hours choosing useless textbooks and planning pointless powerpoint lectures. They have also specialized in being unhelpful. I have tried to drop out every quarter since I began but to do so I need the Dean's signature. The Dean refuses to meet with me. I have literally been trapped into giving UCLA my money each quarter. I know I can't meet the demands of school. I'm a nervous wreck. I'm barely completing my assignments. I've never been a bad student but I am now. My GPA sucks and I really want to quit. But I can't quit without the Dean's signature. So I go on. I scrape together crap to hand to the teachers on the due dates. I haven't even started my Master's project. I want to quit. I tell everyone I want to quit. But still the Dean won't take my phone calls...not until UCLA gets my full tuition. Then they'll happily declare me unfit to graduate and flush me down the river. Yep. That's the faith I have in my professors.

Stress #3: The boyfriend

He would tell you that he's not stressful. That's because he's unemployed with a great, supportive girlfriend, a mom to take care of him, and the government paying his bills. He has no needs. Most of his needs are carefully met by me who is still SO STRESSED OUT about our relationship. No one is enjoying my nonstop worries but I'm so far into this thing and yet it's still so uncertain. I am not a person who does uncertainty well. Every day I feel like a huge guillotine swings above my head just waiting until I breathe wrong and the last twine of our relationship splits so that the axe can meet my trembling neck. I'm not being dramatic. I think being a "girlfriend" is excruciatingly painful. All of this constant analysis of who I am and if I measure up to the great girlfriends of past and future is threatening to make me crazy. Although I've used this blog for all my whinging, I'm really quite a lovely, kind, gracious person...but anything under a microscope is a whole world of messy. As the boyfriend continues to delay any further action in our relationship until he feels more stable in his own life, I watch the guillotine sway in the wind and await its final judgment. It's stressful. Really, really stressful.

Stress #4: The economy

This is closely tied to the boyfriend and the job. I want to run away from all of it but as the markets decline around the world, even running away to my beloved England is becoming less possible. I applied for a new job to try and solve stress #1 but the reality is that everywhere is bad and it's a bad time to take a new job and risk being the first lay off. Yet feeling this trapped in my life is bad for me. I need to sniff at freedom. I need to believe the boyfriend can get a job and that I can get a better job. Yet I know that I should be grateful for what I have. I know it could be worse. And yet...I want to be the unemployed one with the perfect boyfriend and the mom taking care of me and the government paying my bills.

Stress #5: Politics

I like Obama. Can he please live long enough to restore hope to the people? I hate FOX news. It's stirring up hate and should be punished when the first crazy-person shoots at Obama in the name of the Religious Right. Furthermore, my boyfriend's family belongs to the Religious Right. I am struggling with my own bigotry towards that group and trying to see them as more than the politics with which I do not agree.

None of this is really the BIG STRESS. The big stress is the uncertainty in my life. I don't know if I'll graduate, marry my boyfriend, get fired, or end up alone and moving home. I don't know anything. I want to be one of those people who zens through the rough stuff but I've had enough BAD in my life to fear uncertainty because, in general, for me, if it can get worse, it will. And right now, all of my future is so far out of my control. My general philosophy is if I can't solve it, I should run from it. But there's this sneaky little voice that suggests maybe I can find a happy ending if I just stay put and don't run. Yet the winds are raging and guillotine swaying and I'm not sure I can keep my neck stuck out like this.