I’m taking a breather at the moment. I am stressed out, completely unnecessarily, by a thousand things that are bothering me, but which, in the long run, don’t affect me nearly as much as I believe.

First of all, I’m not the most punctual blogger. Heck, I don’t even write in my personal journal as much as I’d like to. Exploring my thoughts and feelings is how I’m trying to understand myself, and sharing it with a couple of other people is how I hope to meet new folks and make some friends. If I don’t write, then this blog isn’t doing me any good.

Except… this is a hobby blog. I write for my own introspection, and nobody is putting any pressure on me to create daily content. Heck, most content creators don’t do daily anyway. They do something once a week, or on another schedule that lets them take their time to create. This isn’t a publication I’m doing for money. I’d like to monetize eventually just to pay for the blog, but I’m not striving to have thousands of followers. I just want a few people who enjoy my writing and who I can connect with.

Meanwhile, at work, I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure because we are moving to a new computer program to do our work, and learning the new program, as well as working out the bugs in it, has been stressful. I feel like training on the new program on top of my regular work is weighing me down.

Again, though, I feel like I’m overestimating how much pressure I actually am under. During the course of the day, I can focus on my regular tasks, and practice on the new system in my free time, when I am not overloaded with orders. Nobody at my job is breathing down my neck. Nobody is demanding so much from me that I should be feeling any kind of stress.

Mindfulness is one of my weak points. What I really need to do is calm down a little and focus on the things that need to get done first, followed by the things that can wait a bit. Instead of punishing myself for not having multiple things done at once, I need to take a deep breath and calm and center myself.

I started by sitting down with my back straight and my feet firmly on the floor. Taking deep breaths, I inhaled through the nose, held for five seconds, and slowly exhaled. My racing heart slowed. The anger sort of settled down, becoming lighter. I drank some water before doing a few stretches. Once my body was looser, I put in my earbuds and put on soft music accompanied by woodland sounds. I topped the whole thing off by adding some aroma therapy (I put on a small amount of my favorite perfume).

This seems to have worked. I’ve been more at-ease this afternoon. I don’t feel so frustrated. Listening to other people have conversations in the background isn’t annoying me.

I think I should probably start meditating about a half hour before work, to try and de-stress before I get there. I’ll have to look into some free meditation resources to help me out. It will also help if I stretch periodically, or sit quietly when I start to feel frazzled.

This is just something else I have to work on if I want to be healthier in mind, body, and spirit!