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Tag: stress

Chronic Stress

Hello, friends, how are you? I’m actually pretty decent, today at least. We’re taking a few days to just rest. Nothing planned, nothing in particular, just chilling and not worrying about anything. Well, in theory. In practice, my spouse has had two work meetings he hasn’t been able to get out of, the kids have whined about being bored, we had a miscommunication about how long to spend on an art project versus making dinner, and I’ve spent about four hours at the pool, which is a lot of pool but I suppose isn’t too bad. (May also have gotten sunburned. Whoops.) I’ve used the non-family time to read 75% of a novel and 60 pages of a nonfiction book, finish revising a chapter and start another, and take a nap (which was not terribly successful because everyone kept coming in to bother me, oh well). And I am purposefully not thinking about anything that’s been giving me anxiety lately–nothing related to school or volunteer commitments, nothing related to the basement flood or the tornado, nothing related to my furnace failing, nothing related to upcoming conventions. Will I have to think about all those things tomorrow? Oh, absolutely. Dance classes, a book study, an email to the other volunteers, choir practice, the furnace people and the landscapers, my neighbor whose wife just died. But those are for tomorrow. Today, we let ourselves relax. Today, we find joy and comfort where we can. I can’t imagine the chronic stress that we…

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KD Boldly Ran Away, Away

For various reasons, the last few years have been a bit rough for me. To make things even better, my haven for so much of my life, my writing, has not come easily. It’s a problem endemic in writing books– if you want your characters to resonate, then even sci fi and fantasy must reflect reality, and reality has really not been something I wanted to think about. I like to write hopeful, I mean. And hope has been hard to find. Anyway. So there have been various crises. There’s been All The News You Need to Hide From. And then… I’ve heard there are people out there who just use Word to write books. I am not one of them. I remember the day I gave up on Word. I’d been typing up something for work, and three times in a row I typed “7th” and Word made the “th” superscript and then crashed because it couldn’t handle its own autocorrection. When I got done swearing the third time, I went and found and downloaded OpenOffice. OpenOffice was great! I was devoted for years–but then came the siren call of dedicated fiction writing software. I wanted. But I was poor, and it was expensive, and OpenOffice worked fine… Winners of NaNoWriMo 2011 received a code for (IIRC) 50% off a Scrivener license. People on the NaNo boards loved Scrivener. I think I downloaded the trial version halfway through, and then bought a license when I got my discount. Since…

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Best of Intentions

When I came home from work today, as I staggered in the door escaping the 100°+ heat and was met by the cat who must be greeted immediately or Bad Things Happen, the housemate called from her room, “Oh! You’re home. I…had intended to do the thing today.” She said this because I had asked her to do the thing today, as I reluctantly trudged out the door to work nine hours before. “I had the best of intentions!” she assured me. I laughed and asked, “What’s the name of that place, you know, the road is paved with intentions, but I forget…?” and we laughed and I went off to my room and sat down to do the thing that I’m supposed to do tonight at the latest–write a blog post for Turtleduck Press. And that, dear friends, is where my own intentions went astray, because instead of landing on Turtleduck Press, I got a 500 error. Well, blast. I’m not the girl who runs straight to tech support. I know my way around a cpanel, at least more than some. So off I went, looking for advice. Hadn’t touched any permissions or the .htaccess, not blinking likely too many processes were running but I checked anyway, error log blank (really?), so off I went to tech support after all. And as I sat waiting for the lovely tech support person* in the chat to check all the things I already checked, I jotted some notes about the blog…

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Comfort Reads for Troubled Times

Some days it feels like the world is really going downhill. Natural disasters (as I write this, Texas and India are still recovering from massive floods, large chunks of western North America are on fire, and another hurricane is gearing up to hit some vulnerable islands on the way to Florida), politics (’nuff said), bad days on a personal level…and if they all combine, watch out! On days like this, one of the best cures is a comfort read. Simply defined: it’s a book you pick up because you know it will make you feel better. It’s by a favourite and trusted author. You’ve probably read it before (perhaps many times), or else you’ve been looking forward to reading it (maybe it’s a new installment in a series you love). Maybe you discovered it at an impressionable age and love it beyond all reason even though you know it’s not objectively the best book ever. It has stood the test of time…at least for you. What books qualify as comfort reads? Obviously, the answer to that is very personal. Some people might crave works that are light and funny, or sweet and romantic, or even dark, so that they feel less alone. Here are some of mine… The Lord of the Rings Yup, I’m one of those people. *grins* I’ve read the books multiple times. Most of those times were long ago, but I’m slowly rereading them now, and let me tell you, it’s a bit weird revisiting them for…

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Stop and Listen to the Music

Last Thursday my husband and I went to a Sonata Arctica concert. We’d snagged tickets on Black Friday ($12–and only $18 even with the ridiculous ticket fees) and so we made the fairly last minute decision to go. And, oh, it was glorious. Small, intimate venue, music so loud I couldn’t hear properly for approximately 12 hours afterwards, a small crowd of music lovers who braved the below freezing temperatures to come hang out in a tiny venue without proper parking… But it was really the music that made it great. Sonata Arctica is a Finnish power metal band, and they were touring with Leaves’ Eyes (multi-national symphonic metal band) and Omnium Gatherum (Finnish death metal band). (My husband: Is all music in Finland metal? Me: Probably.) (For those people who are like “There’s genres of metal music?” here is a description of the various ones.) Omnium is not really my taste, so we missed the beginning of their set, but there was a point during Leaves’ Eyes’ set where I came back into my self and realized–that probably for the first time in a long time–that all my stress had fallen off, that I was content, that all the things that I worry about day in and day out had, for at least the moment, disappeared. As you can imagine, it was quite freeing. Symphonic metal is my favorite music genre, and I’ve found it to be very useful writing music as well, especially when I’m doing high or…

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Mental Health for the Holidays

I think November’s been tough on a lot of us, and December isn’t necessarily any easier. Personally, besides the obvious stressors, I’ve also had a truly hectic month at work and came down with two colds in quick succession. Seems like a good time to review self-care. So here are some reminders, for myself as much as for you all… 1. Take the time to do something you love. I was lucky enough to attend not one but two contra (folk dance) weekends away from home in November. Lots of exercise, friends, wonderful live music, the state of flow, and a natural high, not to mention the excitement of a road trip. (Of course, that’s probably also where I picked up both of those colds. Argh.) 2. Do something creative. If you’re a creative professional (like a writer), do something else creative. I’m a big believer in “creative cross-training”. We writers love to talk craft and work on improving our craft, which is important. But it’s also important to go and try something else — something that doesn’t have the same stakes and expectations attached. For me right now, it’s Instagram, contra dance, and occasionally tinkering in the kitchen. 3. Try something new. At one of the aforementioned dance weekends, I got to try English Country Dancing (a cousin to contra) and swing dance, both new to me (swing dancing has footwork, ack, but the music is so much fun…). At the other, I got to try dancing the “gent’s”…

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