Complex Numbers

Can't Stress Enough

I have a stressful day at work today ... What strategies do you use to manage stress in your life?

Honestly, the strategies I use to manage stress in my life wouldn't work for most people. They include:

Going to sleep when I want to and waking up whenever it happens naturally

Not having kids

Not having a job

Avoiding stressful situations

Drinking

Staying away from people who want to tell me how I should live

Since we're on that last subject, I did come across this list,   which had the opposite effect of its clear intention, as reading it made my blood boil.

It's titled "50 Ways To Live On Your Own Terms," but it should be titled "50 Ways To Live On My Terms Because I'm Better Than You."

While there are a few - very few! - points on this list with which I agree, it started to piss me off from #1.

1. Stop consuming caffeine

How about you bite me?

And then there's:

2. Pray or meditate morning, mid-day, and night

Okay, let's think about the normal American life for a minute.

You have 24 hours in a day. No more, no less (okay, with the possible exception of two days a year when you switch from DST or back, but let's not be too pedantic about it).

Everyone who has an opinion about it, including the author of this drivel, recommends 8 hours of sleep. That leaves 16.

You work for 8 hours a day. That leaves 8.

A normal commute is 1 hour. That's 2 hours, leaving 6.

Waking up, showering, getting dressed, eating breakfast - let's be generous and call it 0.5. Leaves 5.5.

Lunch. Usually an hour. Leaves 4.5.

Doing stuff to get ready for bed. Another half-hour. Leaves 4 hours.

Exercise. I'll grudgingly admit that exercise is good for you. You should do that every day. Even if your routine is only 1/2 hour long, which I take to be a minimum, you also need time to go to the gym, get dressed, get dressed again, and come back from the gym. Call it another 1/2 hour. If you're only exercising for 1/2 hour like I said, we're down to 3 hours.

Dinner. Maybe you have someone to cook it for you; maybe you're doing the cooking. If you're doing it, between cooking, cleaning up, and actually eating, that's easily an hour. Now we have 2 hours left in the day.

What am I missing? Oh yeah, sex. To do it right takes at least an hour. Feel free to make jokes about it only taking 30 seconds in the comments. But I stand by my math here.

So, let's see, carry the 2... you have one hour to do other stuff, and that's if you don't have kids.

Now, sure, you can, for instance, order a pizza instead of cooking dinner and free up some time that way, but we're talking about trying to lead a healthy lifestyle here, right? Personally, I'd order the pizza, but we all know I'm no role model.

Or maybe you can enrich yourself by listening to an audiobook whilst commuting or at the gym. Still, if you remember, this entire section of the rant is about squeezing in meditation time, and for that you need to be mindful, focused, and undistracted by other stuff.

Something usually gives. For me, it was sleep. I'm still feeling the negative effects of that. Don't be me.

Point is, we're only on #2 and I've already explained why the list is full of shit.

Now, I'm not going to go into all of these. You can read the mishigoss for yourself and draw your own conclusions. They might be different than mine. That's fine. But here are a few other lowlights:

13. Go to bed early and rise early

Let me explain this one more time: Some people have different natural schedules. If you're getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep a day (which you're not), what the fuck does it matter what the clock says when you're doing it?

There might be a correlation between natural morning people and productivity. But correlation != causation.

15. Replace warm showers with cold ones

Bugger off, wanker. Of all the simple pleasures in life, this is the only one that has no godsdamned calories or carcinogens.

23. Replaces Carbs With Healthy Fats

There’s lots of research showing that healthy fats don’t make you fat. Actually, refined carbs and sugars are what make you fat.

Actually, calories are what make you fat. Refined carbs and sugars make you hungry faster, so if you're undisciplined (like me), you end up eating more calories overall.

And you know how I feel about nutritional "research." I won't go into it again here.

25. Choose to have faith in something bigger than yourself, skepticism is easy

I find that the precise, exact, polar opposite is true. Atheists make up a small percentage of the population, and most of us arrived at that philosophical point after a lot of hard thinking and self-searching, and with resistance from almost everyone else in our lives. If you think being a minority is easy, you're not a minority.

27. Give at least one guilt-free hour to relaxation per day

Aaaaaand there goes your final hour.

43. Make your bed first thing in the morning

Making your bed is an utter, complete, and total waste of time.


         47. Become good friends with your parents

Go to hell. My parents each spent 10 years struggling with dementia, then died. Not even concurrently. I spent 20 years of my life dealing with that. You know, in case you wanted to know why I'm so angry sometimes.

Now, I could also mention the few items I can agree with, but what's the point? The rest of the article calls those into question for me, so I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks reevaluating, for example, 48. Floss your teeth.

Hey, look at that, I was supposed to write about dealing with stress, and instead, I managed to cause some.

I want a drink.