Enga mellom fjella

Stress and incivility

In a comment at the blog of Solivagus

I am easily stressed, depressed and overwhelmed. Trauma? LOL. I manage my anxiety and depression by not staying in my cave. Some days that means getting out to where I feel safe. Other days I stretch my limits ... but not too far. On days when I'm fine everyone thinks I'm normal even happy!

The trick is knowing myself well enough to know when to walk away or distract myself with something else.

I could share what happened last night but that would be b.o.r.i.n.g and nobody cares regardless. (Posted it on facebook and only got one commenter ... people want to know what color you painted your nails not anything bothering you...)

Which adds to the stress.

As for incivility? I need to learn to keep my mouth shut here in Costa Rica. Throwing garbage on the ground when there's a receptacle less than 3 meters away? Not stopping for stop signs (forget signaling)? One good thing: politeness is valued. Still, no one wants to hear the downside of their precious country and no one has much of an idea or care about a solution. (I'm not talking North American imperialist culture here. One instance: Panama and Nicaragua have good roads; Costa Rica not. Accidents take hours to straighten out. Between corruption and incompetence little gets better and Ticos just shrug.)

I've had to ignore. To travel it's best to ignore. It's hard to ignore. As a writer who is trying to observe it's impossible to ignore!

So ... ignore when I can. Let it go when I can't.

If I find the solution I'll try to bottle it. Send you some.

Me:

Slept well after a stressful evening. Nights cool down enough here in December to sleep with a fan, turn it off by morning.

And it quieted down after the celebration after the football championship game (penalties, after 210 minutes of play it was still 0:0 ) Almost boring.

Watched game on the hotel's big screen tv. Nice, considering I have a fan a bed and nothing else in my room for $8/night. Also: shared services and internet. Yesterday, a coffee (depends who's working).

No other news ... yet. I've only had one small cup of joe and it's still morning.

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