I see stress as Lady Macbeth saw blood….

I’ve never been what you’d call particularly New Age-ish type person. Oh sure we’ve all had those awkward teen years when we worshipped Satan but other than that, I’m surprisingly white-bread.

Who cares? Well, allow me to elaborate. I’ve come off a ridiculously stressful year, after a couple of stupendously stressful years. Life threatening illness does that to you…. Then after the surgeries, I thought things would be all Rainbows and pots of gold and frolicking wood nymphs…. but no, hang on my friend – life isn’t done with you yet, in fact it had another punch in the face all booked for you…. Special Delivery, FedEx overnight…

The getting sick again and then losing my job was a bit of a one two punch I hadn’t counted on. As a matter of fact I want you to imagine the absolute opposite scenario – just as opposite as you can imagine, it should physically hurt you the level of opposite you are attaining here. Then go ahead and buy a ticket on the first deep space transport accepting regular citizens, ride it to the end then transfer at the furthest reaches of the universe to the express, which ends at the furthest reaches of the galaxy… now, multiply that distance by infinity, then – multiply that distance, by  the number of blades of grass here on earth, plus 1… now you’re starting to get a bead on the level of my surprise. It’s a large number.

Stressful?

No, thanks I’ve got plenty of my own. Stress is bad news. A killer, something to be avoided at all costs – everyone knows it has been clearly and scientifically proven that stress caused – The Black Death, Polio, Smallpox, Cholera, Ebola, Malaria, Bubonic Plague, Spanish Flu, AIDS, Herpes Simplex 1 thru 7, Syphilis, Rickets, Scurvy and Lice, Bedbugs, Poverty, Rudeness, Halitosis, Fascist Dictators and in particularly bad cases of extreme chronic stress, it can cause Gingers. So clearly, something to avoid. Then the fun really starts when what you do is fall into a stress whirlpool, meaning what starts stressing you out is just the fact that you are stressed. So I worry about being stressed and how it is affecting my heart, particularly since the Atrial Fibrillation is back and that stress and anxiety, breeds stress and anxiety… bammm – whirlpool. The more you try and put a halt to the stress, the more you feel like a failure because nothing is happening, you’re not making any headway… or maybe quicksand is a better analogy, the more you struggle the deeper you sink…

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I know I said I would try and steer clear of the “down” posts but now is as good a time as any to tell you – it also seems that I have adult onset pathological lying… should make the doctors visits interesting.

So as a last resort I’ve begun to seriously consider meditation. Oh god, I’m scared about taking that step, what if I start buying crystals, and tarot cards and flowing gypsy head wraps, then what? But I read this study on meditation and it sounds pretty encouraging, besides it’s not like I have anything to do during the day now…. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha crying………

Meditation group participants reported spending an average of 27 minutes each day practicing mindfulness exercises, and their responses to a mindfulness questionnaire indicated significant improvements compared with pre-participation responses. The analysis of MR images, which focused on areas where meditation-associated differences were seen in earlier studies, found increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion and introspection. Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.

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That sounds pretty positive right? So we’ll see if there’s anything to it, I need to try something and this seems better than the only alternatives I have left, heroin, cheap wine and male hustling…..

Have a Great Day.