Stressed Out

I’ve been very stressed out, lately. On all fronts things haven’t been going too smoothly, and while I’ve always been good at separating worlds and not letting stress in one area of my life spill over into another area of my life, I’m afraid I’ve reached a limit to the amount of stress I can comfortably handle. It’s interesting to see what happens to you when under pressure from all sides, the way you change your behaviour and the way you think, how you treat people but mostly how you treat yourself. I’ve always had a relatively healthy dose of self-loathing, which wasn’t really dependent on what other people thought of me. It was always there, and it kept me honest, and it kept me striving. Of late, mostly due to losing some measure of self-control due to stress, my self-loathing has been getting a little stronger, which wreaks havoc to my determination and discipline. Thoughts of radical changes come and go, but an inescapable fact is that the circumstances will, at least for the first time after a radical change, require more of my attention, and thus increase my stress instead of diminish it.

And then I get word from Veed that he’s going to send me a rather cool, belated birthday present, and it makes me realise how lucky I can be, and then I ask myself the question that I keep asking myself in order to put things in perspective; Are you a child-soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Have you had to hack your parents, brothers and sisters apart with a machette in order to prove your worth to the rebels? Are they forcing you to sniff cocaine laced with gunpowder on a daily basis in order to insure your servitude and give you a feeling of invincibility so you can go out and commit heinous crimes against your fellow men? No…then shut up and count your lucky stars.