stress – The Way Out

[Sept 2013] Under Pressure

I found some interesting contradictions about my behavior under pressure. I remember the times from my childhood when I played the accordion, and I had to play on every possible occasion and celebration in our village. Since there were not many children around who were playing on instruments, playing in an orchestra or a band were not possible. There was only me, playing in solo, sitting on a chair on the stage by myself, with my accordion in my hands. I often had to play in front of hundreds of people in the theater room of the town. I can still recall that anxious feeling that made my stomach turn, the heart palpitations, and the unbearable nervousness that accompanied me before the performances. I didn’t like it. I hated being on the stage all alone, and I was always terrified of it, sometimes more, sometimes less. I never admitted to myself for years how I felt about it, I just did it because I felt I had to. I considered it a challenge that I simply had to face over and over again.

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[Sept 2013] A Fresh Start

I feel like I need a fresh start and a complete renewal from time to time, every few years, to feel a total freedom to start everything all over again. Just like what I have now. I experienced this after I came home from my university studies abroad, then a few years later when I quit my job and had a heart surgery because of my inborn heart arrhythmia. I could start everything all over, with a clean sheet. I had no goals, I had no plans, only wanted to solve the issue of my heart condition, then start a new life.

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[Sept 2013] Cutting the Ties

I woke up this morning extremely nervous and anxious, with thoughts about my job running wild in my head. I couldn’t get over yesterday’s meeting when I had to realize that we wouldn’t be able to deliver our promises to a customer of mine because certain key people were moved from my project to more important ones. It knocked me out right then and there, mostly because I got another unexpected problem and burden to handle, that broke my dreams about having a comfortable letting go of my tasks and projects in the remaining days.

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[Sept 2013] Quitting my Job

I was already very deep down yesterday evening, after working the whole weekend to prepare an offer that I knew we couldn’t win. I was complaining for hours about it to my girlfriend, Sophie. Then I woke up extremely nervous today morning. I prepared myself for the day and meditated a little. I was thinking about whether I should go to work or stay home. I changed my mind every minute, but finally, I sat into my car and drove to the office. I knew there will be an official supervision on a project of mine, that made my stomach turn, because I knew the difference between reality and what we communicated about the project, just to get the necessary funding. When I was walking from my car to the office, I stopped again and thought about going back home. All my muscles were in a cramp. I was nauseous and dizzy from thinking about the things that were waiting for me this day. My body was resisting entering the building and spending there another day. I turned around and walked back to my car. I imagined going home, sending a message that I was sick, and staying in bed for a week in a fetal pose, eating pizza, not talking to anyone, being isolated from society and the world. That was what my body and soul wanted. But after a few steps back to my car, I suddenly turned around and entered the building, against all my desires.

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[Jul 2013] Back to Work

Today was my first workday after my one-week holiday with friends. It was hard, damned hard. Even more than I expected. I am still feeling fine and happy. I am proud that I did it, and I am quite optimistic about the future. I feel like I’ve been working a lot, to feel like this even if only for an hour, and it paid off! I am relieved. No matter how hard this day was, or the other days from the previous weeks, I still feel it is different now. That this is the beginning of something new. Everything is the same, but still a little different!

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[Apr 2013] Hope and Hopelessness

It really felt unpleasant to get up early morning. But I had to and I wanted to, for the mass for my father’s soul. I knew it was mere formality, and a better future might be ahead of me, after I had hit the bottom of the seemingly bottomless pit of suffering.

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[Mar 2013] Fighting Hard

God can see my soul, I am fighting so hard day in and day out, to keep myself together, to live a healthy life, in the middle of elemental storms attacking from all directions.

I’ve read a book of a psychiatrist, who had a patient, a young woman. She was always complaining whining, although she had everything to be happy, to live a successful life. But instead, she was always blaming others for her misery and failures, and never did the things she sould have done. He asked her if she had ever seen a disabled child trying to draw. The woman didn’t understand the question. He explained it to her: the child grabs the pencil so strong that it almost breaks in half, his little eyes google, they want to fall off their places, his vein wants to blow up in his neck, his tongue lolls out of his mouth. He hasn’t got much from God, but he uses every little drop of what he has, in order to create something on that paper. He is fighting with all his parts. And what does the woman do? She got everything, but all she does is crying that nothing works for her. If one day this little child meets God, I can see, that he is told: “Good job, little boy, you really did everything you could.”

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[Febr 2013] A Horrible Saturday

It is Saturday afternoon, I am home at my parents, we are just after lunch, and we are setting out with my mother for the neighbour city to settle the phone-subscription of the family. I am already tense and nervous enough, even the crowd is frustrating to me at the plaza. Getting closer to the store, I am getting steamed up, but I restrain myself, and tell the slightly complicated story about what we want to arrange here. I also show the authorization paper, that we wrote so that my poor sick and weak father can stay at home. The girl interrupts me immediately, claiming that they only accept authorizations signed by a public notary. We didn’t have that of course, because getting that is far more complicated and troublesome than coming here with my father. This was the point where something broke in me. I turned back to ask if I can sign the papers in the name of my father, but they refused it, because it is too risky for them to let that happen. My mind went blank, I knew that I can’t think and cope any more. We went back home with my mother, and told the bad news to father. Then we decided (actually they decided because I wasn’t in the state of making decisions) that we don’t have a choice but to go back together, with my father.

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[Febr 2013] Lessons of a Difficult Day

It is Monday morning. I went to sleep yesterday with the feeling that I am going to have a great day today. And it all started accordingly. I woke up nice and refreshed. I arrived at work on time, everything went perfectly. Until my stomach flinched, when my boss asked me about the delay of my document-management project, for which he hadn’t given me enough people to work on it for a year now. It was really hard to keep calm and balanced, but after that everything went back to normal.

I came home late to work some more, then two colleagues came to me to talk about our private little business venture. I went down to open the garage for them, and I saw that they had put a wheel clamp on my car, in front of my own garage. I saw that someone had put a black bag on the table that permitted parking. I went completely out of my mind, I lost the ground under my feet, my heart started pounding. I spent the whole meeting not really knowing where I was. Even an hour later, when I was going to the post office to pay the penalty, I had to take deep breaths to be able to control myself.

All this on a day that seemed to be so perfect, for a while…

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