Caren, I think everyone's "life stress" baseline is different. Like you, I have a lot of "high end" events that I cope with in any way I can manage at the time. But I've seen other people become as stressed (if not more) by what would seem to me a minor bother (say...a day without power) as I am by one of my kids having emergency surgery (last week). People also get pretty riled-up crazy by "good stress" (like an upcoming wedding, or getting work done so they can go on vacation), not differentiating it from bad (like having pneumonia, your husband falling through the ice and your brother being distraught over his dog going through chemo
)
Here's my example from last week:
My husband thought my dad would like to see the play "Hamilton" (he's a crazy American history buff and also loves Broadway) so I started looking for new tickets to go on sale (starting around Thanksgiving). I asked my brothers and sister if they were interested in doing a semi-big group for Dad's 75th birthday and they were. I asked for help in getting it all together and...well, that didn't happen despite my being a lot more assertive than usual in asking. Mostly this was because this was my idea (i.e. Mark's) and I was the most invested. So I signed up for a bunch of forums to get a heads-up for when tickets went on sale and got exactly 18 hours notice before an AMEX presale, at which I bought 20 tickets on two AMEX cards (the limit) at prices which were double what I had told my siblings to expect. The total was almost $4000, putting Mark and my cards up to the limit. Half of the tickets were for Mark and our kids; one was for my dad and the rest were split between my siblings (3 tickets each). I told them the ticket prices had doubled and I could sell the tickets if they didn't want to buy them but if they wanted them they needed to get me some money.
Guess what they said?
Right. They wanted the tickets but they couldn't pay me until _______________ (they did their taxes in April, their wife got her teeth fixed, and their girlfriend found out if she got into physical therapy school because she wanted their saved money to go toward the deposit).
As it turns out, I need to free up some credit card room for a trip I've planned for Mark's birthday in March. And I could threaten to sell the tickets if they don't pay me, but my dad is
super-incredibly-psyched for this trip. He's mostly deaf and wears hearing aids but can't make out most words in a play so he bought both the soundtrack and a recording of the entire play so he could memorize it all before we go, next December
. I also can't sell the tickets for a few months even if any of my grumble-grumble siblings back out.
This gave me a headache but it's all good stress, meaning nothing bad happened. I got Hamilton tickets, which is a mini-miracle. Enough for our whole family to go. They cost a fortune but I will eventually either get the money back from my sibs or from reselling them. My biggest problem is finding extra money for a Florida vacation in March. To do so I'll have to be frugal for the next 6 weeks and worst-case-scenario use savings rather than credit, which in the end is probably a good thing.
In the end the whole thing made me laugh. Mark said he could have scripted how it would go exactly, which made him laugh too. But in another family all the money talk, the income disparities, the pushy big sister, the potential I have for making a killing with any extra tickets (this is true), the anxiety of our father's failing health, and the resentment of my wanting money quickly in order to take Mark on a vacation could have led to arguments, hurt feelings and worse.
Haven't you seen this kind of craziness happen over weddings? My daughter is nuts over how I'm going to fit 70 people in our tiny living room for her baby shower next week.
Me? If it's stress and disruption over something "bad" then I give up on writing and do whatever I need to in order to stay afloat. If Mark was in the ER (which he was last month, for chest pain) I would bring the most erotic romance I could find and read him hot bits between nursing visits in order to make him smile.
But if it's anxiety over something "good," I am
severe with myself in not angsting, and not devoting extra time to worrying, talking about it or anxiously running around wasting time. Not that I'm always successful, but I am getting better all the time.
All of your stuff this week sounds pretty bad but that's not always the case, right? I say keep the difference in mind
Lisa
