Tag: stress

Overextended

A happy life, I’ve learned, is all about balance.

A happy life usually has equal parts of joy and stress and in manageable measures.

There will always be challenges in the tasks of daily life.

We take care of ourselves. We create and check items off our “to-do” list. We pay our bills. Send congratulatory birthday messages. Take the garbage out. Eat.

But then there are those other times. The times when stress is greater than joy. When the tasks that need to be done match the complexity of Santa’s gift list. (How DOES he do it?)

Lately, I find myself in Santa’s shoes – metaphorically.

I’m setting up house and the process seems to have gone on ad infinitum. That is an exaggeration but you may relate to the feeling.

When the budget report is due at work. The term paper is due tomorrow. The school bake sale is on the weekend and you haven’t even picked up baking supplies yet.

The end of the month means all the bills have to be paid on time or face penalties and interest charges if they aren’t. Is there enough in the account to cover everything?

It is cyclical. I think that is god’s trick to keep us all moving forward. I mean, if everything were taken care of for us and we had nothing to do or plan for, what could we possibly do with all of our free time?

Part of being busy for me is personality and character based. I love being busy. It is something of a creative exercise for me to plot and plan and devise what new projects I can take on.

Whether those projects are focussed on my hubby or in the kitchen, the garden, the house, or the world at large, I am always happier when I have tasks to accomplish.

And happier still, when I have the means to accomplish those tasks. That means the health and energy to tackle them. The money to acquire the necessary components for the task(s).

If I’m honest, overextended for me is a way of being. I say I don’t like it when stress is out of control and I am wildly out of balance between happy time and fretting. But who created this imbalance, I am compelled to ask?

Er, me? Okay. Yes. Guilty as charged. It may be that overextension has become a habit of mine. I raised two children as a single parent. Those were days of fairly nonstop overwhelm.

Speaking personally, no one advises you exactly how much time, attention and hard labor (well beyond the initial birth pushing to get them here) that babies and children require.

That is likely an unspoken agreement on the part of humanity to ensure the population keeps replenishing itself. Because if everyone knew at the outset exactly what the whole child-rearing/parenting gambit was going to entail, it might discourage people from having them.

In this current slice of overwhelm I am living through, I am quietly seeking solutions. Prioritize to start. What has to be done? (And what are the consequences if it isn’t?) What do I want to do? (And why? Personal satisfaction or to please someone I love?)

Or, frankly, the third block on my priority list is that it doesn’t matter. If I ever get around to doing this thing, it likely won’t matter but I’ve always wanted to try it and wouldn’t it be neat if I could? (Rock tumbling and polishing comes to mind. Don’t ask. A childhood hangover.)

So time to make a new priority list. Time to carve up those tasks according to my little chart of need/want/maybe. Time to engage the help of others (when and as possible). Time to give myself a break.

And while I’m at it, I’m going to give myself a hand and an “attagirl” for what months of attacking “to-do” lists has already helped me achieve. I don’t normally promote looking backwards as it usually accomplishes little to ruminate about the past.

But occasionally, when you need to take a breath and a breather to reorient yourself to what you need to do, it is good to remind yourself of what you have accomplished.

Likely at a time when you were in a place very much like the place of overwhelm you are trying to dig yourself out of today. Remind yourself of what’s been done to date and how far you’ve come.

Sip and savor that cappuccino. Read a little from a best-selling new novel between tasks. Sit in the sun and appreciate the garden you planted that wasn’t there before you came along.

It’s an important strategy boost to reenergize yourself for the tasks ahead.

I believe it is called balance.

Auld Lang Syne

I finally caught up with an old friend last week after a number of false starts. Hung up with mixed feelings.

Full disclosure: I have been under an enormous strain these past few months for a number of reasons. I have lived with a PTSD diagnosis for a long time. Some of the strain in my life has been deeply triggering. I am trying to navigate and resolve those feelings. There doesn’t appear to be a quick fix.

Here’s how triggered PTSD manifests in me: I talk my fool head off and mostly about me. I can’t fully explain why I do that or what that feels like. It is as if I am fighting for my life. It feels like I MUST make my position and feelings known and clear to whoever I am talking to. I desperately seek validation and reassurance.

That is compounded as I am terrified of not being heard. I am terrified that some crisis will happen because I didn’t warn someone strongly enough about what I see is about to happen. Not that I have ultimately been listened to anyway. To the listener, of course, it comes off as self-absorbed poppycock.

The listener isn’t wrong. Especially when they have no idea of the strain you are under or have been out of your life for a while. Life intervenes. Stuff happens.

So it was an odd phone call where the dynamic quickly shifted from “girls catching up.” She transitioned into “counsellor” mode and I was relegated to being “the patient.” It felt icky.

No doubt it was discomfiting on her part to engage in a phone call you thought would be a cheer-filled catchup only to find you are faced by a barrage of well-worn, existential complaints. And not for the first time.

I have had to navigate this dichotomy my whole life. Raised without solid boundaries or a clear and solid sense of self, I have erred on the boundary crashing front in extremis. I have had to identify and learn for myself what most of my peers picked up just by living at home.

Nowhere has this been more troublesome than in intimate relationships. I used to have a no-fail relationship management strategy. Before things got too close and intimate, I’d blow the relationship up. I’d break it off or create an irresolvable situation. By so doing, I was able to keep the pain of self-disclosure and exposure at bay for years. Sure, it was lonely. but it worked.

So I am on the phone with this old friend and desperately hoping she can sense and hear my pain and I spew my inflamed and irritated feelings all over the conversation. In a healthy and reasonable response, she backs off, shuts down and changes gear.

I am no longer the “old friend.” I am the supplicant. A problem to be solved. An object of pity and sadness. The Margot that drives her crazy. I gotta tell ya, that summary sucks.

And yet I clearly see how we have evolved into this place. We have hardly talked but a few times to catch up in recent months (years?). She has walked with me through a dozen major and minor crises in my life (largely self-created) over several decades. Her comparatively stable upbringing is the calm and centering counterpoint to my chaotic upbringing.

But I am a peripheral friend. An artifact of our college days. Outside her core of sensible and compatible friends who are calm and centered like she is. She has been a good friend nonetheless but time is having its way with us.

No longer the easy and familiar camaraderie. No longer the unspoken understandings that write the shorthand of longtime familiarity. Not much idea either of what is going in each other or in our lives that makes conversation fluid and empathetic.

I’m not grieving exactly. Our friendship is not finished. I am having to adjust to how it has altered. And why it has altered. My self-absorption and rumination would be part of it. But also our lives have changed in ways neither of us can fully appreciate. How could we? We haven’t seen each other face-to-face for years.

The loci of her life and of mine have separately shifted to the point of being unrecognizable to each other. I have not visited or even seen the new house she and her husband moved in to over two years ago. Even members of a kaffeeklatsch are more intimate.

I love her dearly and have always been profoundly grateful to have her in my life. But there have been periods of strain between us (some longer than others). Sometimes I marveled that the friendship held up at all.

i’ve always harbored the nagging feeling of being on the rim of her life as something of an interesting oddity. But trusting she found me bright and engaging enough to make a continued friendship worthwhile.

We talked about the weirdness of our last phone call. She found it weird, too. She identified an old and objectionable pattern in me where negative emotions took me over and ruled the day. I will try not to make that mistake again.

She is to be forgiven for not wanting to tolerate how pain manifests in me as it can be contagious. And it’s pretty self-absorbed. She likely has no idea how humiliating and upsetting it is to know my childhood deficiencies still manifest inappropriately.

I was heartened a year or two ago when she sent me something of a personal manifesto in an email. She wrote about carving out her own space and reclaiming her soul after a life devoted to serving others. She wanted to figure out how she wants to be and what she wants to keep in her life moving forward. Right on, said I.

My old saw: nothing in life is constant but change. She is now a long-married, happily retired professional woman who gallivants about North America and the world in her retirement while she and her husband still can. I am happy for them. It is a well-deserved coda to a good woman’s life.

Our friendship will continue. Most probably not apace. I received no signals that I’ve been kicked to the proverbial curb (yet!) in her emotional and psychic sorting process. I will try to be more careful and considerate in times of personal stress and strain. She is quite right. She doesn’t need that in her life.

It is an old and valuable friendship that has been through many shared experiences and challenges. The friendship is still there and still valuable. It has simply changed. Which was inevitable and up to me to adjust to. I’m learning the adjustments just keep on coming as we spend more time on the planet. Such is life.

Love you, old friend.

Changing Direction

Change is the only constant in life, they say.

I both hate change and I don’t. Whatever change I am on the brink of causes me stress whether I expect the change to be positive and, obviously, when I anticipate the change will be negative.

I haven’t always been able to accurately call how a situation is going to work out or how I am going to feel about it. Not in the beginning anyway.

I have enthusiastically embarked on new jobs only to discover several weeks or months later that the work and the situation were not what I expected.

Maybe the work hours were too demanding and draining. My colleagues may have been less than I expected. Testier, maybe. Or uncooperative. Backstabbers.

Sometimes I felt I just didn’t fit the job or the job didn’t fit me. Those jobs obviously didn’t last all that long. Their choice by times, and at other times, mine.

The trouble is we cannot know what lies ahead of us. We make the best decisions we can based on what calls to us or what we are forced to choose. The former are the lucky ones. The ones who pursue a path in life just because it feels right. Not because Mommy or Daddy did it for a living or are telling you to do it.

You can burn a lot of daylight and productive years following someone else’s dictates and expectations. Many people feel they have no choice. Many people do it because they can’t conceive of other alternatives. Many can conceive of other alternatives but are too afraid to try.

The people who imagine a different future and don’t pursue it are the ones I feel most sorry for. It is like that old saying: a taste of honey is worse than never having tasted honey at all.

You cannot continually negate or ignore what is most important to your soul and realistically expect a good result. Yet many ignore the calling of their soul anyway. And many pay a very high price for doing so. The “go-along-to-get-along” crowd.

Believe me, the crowd doesn’t give a care. Your life is yours. Believe that. I fear many don’t. It is hard to establish a path, set goals and establish boundaries that will help you get there. There can be a lot of choppy water to get through.

I reflect on this as I have been reading book coaches websites. They know intimately (or at least claim to know) the excuses, the obstacles, the distractions, the temptations, the naysayers scripts (both external and internal) that prevent people from writing.

Book coaches have advice to defeat them all. They have it because they have heard every excuse imaginable.

There is no question that if you write your truth honestly the feeling it generates may be akin to taking off all your clothes and running down main street carrying a flaming torch above your head. Risky, chilly business.

I write what I know because of what I lived through and what I learned from it. Then I share what I experienced and learned with others. I may not be the choir director but my voice is as necessary as any other to add texture and complexity to the choir’s harmonies.

That is a massive change in direction for me. C’mon, I’m a Leo. We are astrologically ordained to be showy, flamboyant and annoying. But that tactic is no longer working for me. I don’t want to be the sharpest tool in the shed. I don’t want to lead the parade. I am happy to follow along in the flow of life and add my steps when and as I am able.

And that is what terrifies me most. Who am I if I am not always in charge? Who am I if I just let something slide? Who am I if I admit my limitations? Maybe just another struggling human being?

That may not be so bad. I have always sensed most people are more forgiving of me than I am of myself. Getting to a place of consistent self-forgiveness would be a nice change.

Maybe I’ll try that for a while and see how it works out. At least, it’s not a job I can be fired from or quit.

Straight Up Medicinal

I am sitting in a fine little library in a small Southern town. Uncluttered open space. The unrelenting order of books lined up on book shelves. All at attention. Spines out. Neatly labeled. Looks like the Dewey decimal system from here but I could be wrong.

Big windows look out on local greenery and shrubbery. It is a big room, brightly lit both by sunlight and thoughtfully placed interior ceiling lights.

And it is quiet. So quiet.

So many of us struggle with externally imposed stress and relentless demands to perform and produce in this “modern era.” A library is a place where there are no demands upon you except to keep to yourself, keep your voice down and your clothes on. Generally agreed upon adult behavior.

Looking around a library imparts a clear sense of how much you don’t know and how much you have yet to learn. There are clear limits on what is possible for one human being to learn in one lifetime. I finally and reluctantly accepted that.

I had a crisis of faith midway through graduate school. Granted I was still very young. But I realized nothing I researched and wrote about in a thesis would add more than an iota of knowledge to all of the accumulated knowledge already available in the world. An atom’s worth at most.

Pretty piddly payoff.

The secret to studying something successfully for a long period of time is passion. You need to be pretty sure that the learning path you embark upon is going to to be just as fascinating to you years from now as it is now. And how would you know that? Well, there’s the rub. You likely won’t.

So much of life is coming upon something, sizing it up based on what we presently know and need, deciding whether or not that opportunity/experience/job/lover will fulfill our current needs and moving forward or back having considered all those things.

I’ve learned that passion sustains itself if it engages your heart and soul and not just your head. If you end up making a decision in any important areas – opportunity/experience/job/lover – using your head over your heart, the outcome isn’t likely to be all that gratifying or sustainable.

I should know. I used to make that mistake consistently. A job was likely to be a lot of fun? Oh no. Couldn’t take that job as it would be too frivolous. A job that would stretch my intellectual limits but had uncertain long-term prospects? Oh heavens no. I needed a steady, nine-to-five job with a predictable work schedule and future.

To my point and chagrin looking back, I remember a conversation with Carol Off, longtime host of the CBC Radio program As It Happens. She talked about a short-term contract she was offered and how she was looking forward to it and all that (her first season on-air with the national daily current affairs program).

I told her I would never be comfortable working like that and needed to find a “real job.” What a putz I was. I never ended up finding that “secure” job. To start, it turned out I hated the “predictability” of a nine-to-five job. I had more entrepreneurial spirit than I would own up to. I was looking for guidance from others and a “sure thing” for far too long into adulthood.

And as it turned out, I got a loathsome 9 – 5 government job. Carol Off went on to become a much respected, award winning multi-year national CBC radio host who kept working from contract to contract. So much for “real jobs.”

Happily, career angst was low on the list of neuroses I had to deal with. In the end, I worked. I made enough money to keep body and soul together. It “worked out.”

And all that I lived up until now led me to this beautiful little library where I am sitting today. In my working days, the library’s unflappable atmosphere of calm and order might well have driven me round the bend. Nowhere near exciting enough. Today I experience it as a tonic for the senses and the nerves.

Libraries never were designed to be social hotspots. They are designed for people who are comfortable with their own thoughts and self-directed intellectual pursuits. And little kids. Libraries are great for little kids with the right programs and activities and boundless learning opportunities.

Things I once mocked for what they weren’t and didn’t offer have now come full circle in my head. Libraries are oases of sanity and peace if you are inclined to appreciate that. Life is inherently risky and unstable. But if you have the courage to believe and follow your own instincts, you may end up where you wanted to be anyway.

Carol Off might agree with me if I met up with her now. The hell with security. Take the contract and run. You might just get a chance to learn what you are really capable of. Hindsight it is said, is always 20/20.

Starting Over

When I was a manager in the civil service, the finance wonks set us off on an out of the norm budget exercise. It was called zero base budgeting.

The idea was to eradicate all the items in your existing budget and then start adding elements back in. In this way, we’d be forced to look at what we were spending money on in our division. A deeper look and closer consideration had us look at our priorities. What programs must stay? Which could go?

There weren’t many seasoned managers who took the exercise or the rationale for doing it seriously. Most budgets became even fatter when the numbers were submitted.

Of course in government, this exercise was moot. There is a reason there are numerous short-term contracts available toward the end of any government’s budget year. Managers want to empty their coffers because that which isn’t spent gets subtracted from their budget in the following year.

I am finding moving is a lot like that zero-base budgeting exercise. But more to do with stuff than money. I visited our new house before we moved in several times. Each time I was in awe of the empty space. The lines of the house flowed from one room into the next. Our old house had been choppy and compartmentalized. This new house was the interior decorating equivalent of a blank canvas.

I knew it would eventually be filled with furniture and stuff to make it habitable. But the question for me was, with what? I knew what I was going for as a design concept. But achieving that vision was a lot less clear.

An analogy with my life occurred to me. With anybody’s life actually. We all arrive on the planet starting at a zero base. I know there are lots of other variables and wildly different birth circumstances. But as for you, newly deposited and still breathing through your mother’s umbilicus, you ain’t got much to begin with.

And so we land in life with a host of expectations that are inherent in the deal of whatever family you have landed in. And life evolves. You don’t get a whole lot of choices in those early years. As a young mother, I was taught the importance of offering my children “choices” in small matters to enhance their sense of personal autonomy.

So many of us stumble along like this in our young lives picking up life experiences: education, family values, friends, skills, likes and dislikes, nascent hobbies and passions that may form part a key part of our life path in adulthood.

Once we settle into a life path, that’s it for the duration for many. Not everybody, of course. But the road less travelled is an aberrant path, and not what the majority choose. Life presents us with stepping stones and goals and benchmarks that shape our path.

The person we marry will be a large part of our future experiences. The decision to have or not have children adds another wrinkle to our life. Whether you elect to study or pursue a trade or start your own business, you will learn and accumulate experiences that will stick.

The midlife crisis was once much ridiculed as self-indulgent and unrealistic. But the more benevolent interpretation is that the so-called “crisis” comes about when someone finds they are living a life, and maybe with a person, not entirely agreeable to them.

They may feel they have missed the mark somehow in making life choices to honor their own inner reality. And time is running out. It is often a time of great change. Marriages break down. And against the stereotype of the boss leaving for his secretary, it is often women who walk out on their marriages in mid-life.

A sense of urgency can arise when the realization hits that you have lived considerably more years on the planet then you will live in the future. It can sharpen the mind and the focus of your life. this is when we hear more people say things like “I lived my whole early life for my parents, my children and my husband. For the next few decades, I am going to live just for me.”

Sometimes the hand is forced as in case of death. I know more and more women now rethinking their future since they have become widows. What seemed impossible to imagine when they were were living life “coupled up” falls away. Life’s lessons rarely mollycoddle us.

So I’m giving some thought lately to “zero-based budgeting” exercise in this moving exercise. We are making choices about “what stays and what goes.” As stressful and disruptive as the move is, choices are being made to decide what is and isn’t important to keep in our lives.

Not a bad exercise which like much exercise, shapes us as the same time that it strains us. Guess that is all part of the birthing process. One we can frequently repeat throughout our lives to get us closer to the essence of who we really are and what is true for us.

Dream Scenario

Busy! Only natural from time to time but busy still needs to be managed. The last month has been super busy and I’m feeling it. Physically and psychologically. We’ve all been there.

A daughter’s recent ten-day visit (VERY busy, but great in every other way). A pending house purchase. Medical maintenance to attend to. Writing a book. Daily dealing with both the necessaries and nice-to-haves in life. This blog.

When someone else had agency over my daily schedule, daily life was somehow easier. Easier as the priorities were clear. Nothing else got done while the demands of the job had dibs on my time.

I eventually came to realize there was a frustrating paradox. When I had time, I had no money. And when I had money, I had no time. Now, at least, I have sufficient time and money to cover my needs without stressing over the lack of one or the other.

So, now what do I do? The dilemma of spending time is actually no less intense. The shift in priorities has moved away from what I need and must do every day. Now I get to decide what I want to do after I have done what I still need to do. Life is tricky like that. It doesn’t ease up the “to-do” list significantly until and unless we decide it does. I actually like keeping busy.

Retirement from a paid job must be a total buzzkill for workaholics. I am sure they could find other ways to use their time and energy. I have seen many people who derived their entire identity and sense of self from their work. It is their entire raison d’etre. Too many times I saw situations where the work went away and, shortly afterward, so did they. Post-retirement deaths seemed endemic for a while.

I often think slowing down for workaholics is similar to having a toxic tsunami overtake them when they cannot distract their minds from busy work any longer. Workaholism is an addiction for many, they are trying to fill an unfillable hole inside themselves. They can’t seem to face the void or heal the pain and start to break down. Sometimes fatally.

So I deliberately wove in pleasurable activities and pursued other interests even while I was working. Now that I am out from behind the paywall, other activities feed my mind and my soul. One day it might be cracking open a new book. It could also be a bike ride around the neighborhood just to get out to get fresh air and sunshine. I have always enjoyed remodeling and interior decoration.

On days when I am feeling committed and energetic, I go to the gym. I am aiming for that sweet spot where “working out” is more a rewarding activity than a chore. That said, my approach to physical exercise can be all wrong. I jump in with great enthusiasm. I take on every machine by creating an intense series of reps and sets – all of which is highly illogical for a self-described couch potato.

I then kvetch as my muscles hurl obscenities at me for the next three to four days. I swear I actually hear them laughing at me as I toy with the idea of visiting the machines again any time soon. I don’t blame them. I collapse in defeat not long afterward and have to ramp myself up again psychologically to go anywhere near the gym at all. I believe the situation I am describing is called “self-defeating.”

I strive daily for that elusive sweet spot of balance. Not too much of anything. Everything in moderation. Honing my vision and energy in on a few important tasks a day instead of a baker’s dozen. I do better some days than others. It has helped that my definition of success and happiness has evolved.

I derive more pleasure some days by just sitting. Or staring at a lovely landscape off in the distance. Maybe thinking about stuff. Maybe not.

When I contrast these halcyon days with the mad days of busy work fuelled by endless ambition, I breathe a deep sigh of relief. I am happy I do not have to choose not to live like that anymore.

It is a gift I realize is not automatically afforded to everyone. I luxuriate these days in having a hot cup of tea, a new book, and sitting in a comfy chair by a picture window with nothing urgent to do. That is my very definition of living a dream scenario.