Whining

How do I deal with stress?

I write here. There is something very soothing about getting my thoughts down in pixels.  I am working on a discipline of posting every day, even if all I post are about the weather and small reminders to change your clocks.  Writing forces me out of my own head.

I do crossword puzzles.  Crosswords are useful for stretching my brain without actually having to seriously think.

There is also Facebook and Livejournal.  I always wish that I could use this as a jumping up point for more human interaction, which I feel I desperately need, but it's a little hard to invite someone to lunch who lives in Oregon or Baltimore or NYC. There are some local people that I need to check with, though.

For complicated reasons, I am a loner.  Partly that is an introversion which has become more pronounced over the years, partly it is a burgeoning social phobia, and part of it has to do with other circumstances.

I'm the person who, once they snap and take out a whole bunch of people in a mall, their neighbors say "but she was always such a quiet person." Not that I think that's likely to happen: I like people in general too much to do that.*

There is the aforementioned driving.  I guess I am lucky that my addiction tends to be a fairly benign one. I don't drink -- or  more than very occasionally -- partly because it conflicts with my meds but just as much from  sneaking suspicion that if I started to drink heavily I would tend to keep on going. I have enough issues that burden the people around me to add to them.

It's a season of restlessness.  I am aimless right now, not in the sense of not wanting to do something, but in the sense of having not concrete goals and knowledge of how to achieve them.  That horizon just keeps beckoning more and more each day.

Right now, my mind is not racing but dancing lightly from one place to another.  It settles gently and lightly on subjects, before flitting butterfly-like to something else.  The Red-Headed Menace got his ADD from somewhere, and I am a better candidate for responsibility than anything else.  It does make me wonder, though, how I was able to concentrate long enough to finish college, let alone law school.

I'll get by.  I promise to find something more interesting to write about, and let go of the navel gazing.** I think it may be time to resort to the writing prompts on Livejournal and the NaBloPoMo website. Oh wait, this might have been one of those Livejournal prompts of a few days ago.  I know they had a "what keeps you up at night" prompt, which is just as likely to result in needless solipsism as "how do you deal with stress."

Hmmph.  Clearly I am not the only person given to self-reflection ad nauseam.


*As Charles Schulz once said, "I love mankind.  It's people I can't stand."
**Did you know omphaloskepsis is the practice of gazing at one's navel as an aid to meditation? Now you do!