Whew, I just finished laying out the January Horizons Magazine and it’s going to press at 8:00am.  I usually have a week off in between each monthly issue, but in November and December, due to the holidays, the press schedule changes.  That means the magazine is due to press a week earlier, which means no time off in between issues.  This past week I’ve been glued to the keyboard almost every waking hour.  That’s usually fine, I really dig my work – but my body likes to move around more than it got to do this week!  The usual dozen+ calls a day doubled as last minute ads came in, as well as friends wishing happy holidays.  I knew I’d finish and go to press on time because, well, I had to and I’ve never NOT finished on time.  But I felt the stress and got to make some interesting observations.

I have very little stress in my life.  I have no ongoing irks with cranky relatives or neighbors or co-workers. I live a fairly worry-free life. I enjoy my home environment.  I have lots of friends.  I’m healthy.  I’m satisfied with my personal appearance.  I have very little debt, my work is fun and fulfilling.  But from time to time stress comes up, like this past week being on publication deadline.

Being stressed is interesting from an observer point of view. My mind wasn’t freaked out. I felt mellow as usual, but the body began hot flashing like crazy.  I haven’t been flashing very much the past month, so it was very noticeable.  Fan on, fan off, hair up, hair down, fuzzy socks on, fuzzy socks off.

If there’s a big stress going on such as having to deal with an emergency, say avoiding a car accident on the highway, I typically experience the stress as a participant and not as an observer.  So it was interesting this past week to experience the stress as an observer.

When I lay out the magazine each month, I work between several programs: Microsoft Word, Windows Explorer, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Mozilla Firefox, AOL and my bookkeeping program.  I am in and out of these programs all day long, so periodically one will crash out.  But it’s usually a quick recovery after rebooting.  But this week, Windows Explorer and Photoshop both kept going down and staying down.  Likely a corrupt dynamic link, said my computer dude.  So I had to work between two computers when I was already cutting it close with deadline.  And already feeling the stress.

As soon as I became aware of the hot flashes, I knew they were an indicator that my body was stressed.  So I went into my emergency remedy mode for final layout stress relief:

I switched chairs and work stations every few hours.  I am in a computer chair so many hours a day that swivel rockers are a must.  That keeps my body flexible when I can’t take much time for stretch breaks.  One less body stress.

I drank some of my different teas.  I typically just drink water all the time, so the tea was a double break: once when I got up to make it and again as I drank it.  Plus it kept me extra hydrated. One less body stress.  Stress used to be an eating trigger for me, so I prepare by having lots of fresh veggies and fruits and soup ingredients on hand.   I eat a little lighter during final layout, just for one less body stress.

Oh, I should mention that – all the above stress?  I’m the one who puts myself through it. As an observer, it’s easy to see that and I have to laugh.  Because the fact is I’m the boss and I make the schedule and I create the deadlines.   I even set the print dates.  During the holidays, I take my print job in a week earlier to make the schedule easier on the printer. To give them one less stress during their busiest, most stressed time.

And so, as an observer, I can see that where there’s stress, I do it to myself. And, seeing that, that makes me laugh and that releases some body stress, too.  The more I can make myself – in stressful times – become the observer, make myself become aware in the moment of the stress, the more readily I’m able to take steps to dispel it.  Try it the next time you are stressed out – cultivate seeing it as an observer, stay hydrated and active.  I’d love to hear your observations about it.

After I’d done the final proofread yesterday, I defragged by going to sleep in my comfy bed for 6 hours in a row.  I felt just like when I shut my computer down each day. I have a program called www.ccleaner.com and I run it at the end of my daily session and it removes all of my temporary files, as well as adware and cookies that build up and slow a computer down.  It usually removes about 30-70mb of junk, but one day last week it removed 528 mb.  Wow!  A lot of stress had been built up in my computer, too.

If it’s true that everything around us mirrors our life, this was just another example.

Chuck my computer magician comes over tomorrow to update my system and begin with a fresh slate.  Ah… one less stress!

🙂

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