Random Pensées

How to improve your stress

You can, you know. It turns out that it is easy to improve your stress level.

I woke up this morning at 3:30 and got out of bed in order to send myself an email detailing all the things I need to do. There are many of them. The list was daunting. Just the same, I took care of at least trying to organize my thoughts for the week and break everything down into a manageable list of tasks. I tell you this not to exalt my own stress levels, since we are all stressed, to one extent or another, but because I wanted to give you a glimpse of my mindset going forward.

I toddled off to the gym at the appointed hour and lifted weights. I did not have it in me to do the cardio work out. Got to the office early, ready to tackle my list, when my cell phone went off. It was our alarm company. The glass break alarm in the kitchen went off at 8:29. The police had been dispatched.

I sat down and opened my coffee. It was now around 8:35 or so. I waited to hear something. I called my wife and I called the nanny to let them know something was going on. I waited some more.

I called the alarm company back to see if they had received any reports back from the police. They had. All was well. It was just the painters, you see.

Fine. The painters. Ok. But, small detail, we weren’t having any painting done.

Stress level shoots waaaaay up and I begin to perspire.

I call the police back. We have a pleasant chat and they confirm that they spoke to the painters who were there to re-do the upstairs wall paper. That’s nice. Our upstairs doesn’t even have any wall paper to re-do. The responding officer and I chat some more and it turns out that he had visited the house next door, not my house.

They re-dispatch officers to my house. By this time, about 50 minutes had elapsed since the alarm company first registered the alarm. Plenty of time to clean the place out. I sit here, drumming my fingers, hoping that if someone broke into the house, they did not take my grandmother’s ring, which I had just given to my wife and which I need to have appraised so I can schedule it on my insurance. Current status of ring, in other words, not scheduled, not insured.

A little while later, the Viking Bride calls to tell me that the police were there when she got home from some thing she had to attend at camp today. All is well, false alarm.

And that, in a nutshell, is how you improve your stress level. Mine went way up in a really very short time.

How’s your stress?

Posted by Random Penseur at July 24, 2006 09:45 AM | TrackBack