Oh, The Irony: Stress Management

Wednesday [yesterday] was a pretty awesome day.  I had class in the morning, and had a great time in both Healthful Living and English.  I kept up my streak of reading ‘Romeo’ for an in-class play, and I honestly love reading Shakespeare.  After class I spent some time at home eating and working on a stress management paper due the next day.  I also had an English paper due, so I wanted to get at least one done before I had to work.  I trained my first client at 3:00pm, my 5:00pm didn’t show up, so I got a few sentences done before I headed to my first of two drum lessons.  After finally getting home at approximately 8:37, I started doing work again.  The ideas kept flowing, and around 9:30pm my computer gave me the ‘low battery’ warning.  I got off the floor, went to my desk, and plugged it in.  Nothing.  Not charging.  After inspection, I realized that the charging cable had torn right at the AC adapter, just like this.Awesome.  Dead computer.  No way of finishing either paper, so I quickly e-mailed both professors from my cell phone, went for a walk around the block, took a quick shower, then got in bed.  I was surprisingly relaxed about the situation; even my mom (Hi Mom!) commented on it.  Why was I so relaxed?  Well, in my Healthful Living class, there is a huge emphasis on stress management, and I’ve found some amazing ways of dealing with stress.  The first thing I thought of when I realized I wouldn’t have papers to hand in, I thought of the Serenity Prayer.  There was nothing I was able to do at that time of the night, so why should I begin to stress about it?  Next, I took that walk, and tried to relax a little bit in the hot, humid, summer air.  That second step really worked.  Finally, I took a cool shower in the dark, which also worked well.  Between those three, by the time I got in bed around 10:20, I felt great!  The combination of three stress management techniques saved the day!  I’m going to have to cram in the work this weekend, but I’ve found that small changes in my time management and response to negative stressors have completely changed the baseline level of stress I carry about me on an average day.  After I finally complete it, and hopefully earn an A, I’ll post the paper I write for class.  Until then, I’ll breath easy, and continue to not take anything too seriously.  Except this: