10% Strategies and Denouement

My last therapy appointment consisted entirely of me running through all of the different things that are going on right now and how I felt my stress level was very much justified.  Not that one needs justification for feeling the way that they feel, but it is a little validating to stand back and say, yes, there is a lot going on, and feeling like my brain just being "wrong" about the situation is at least one less thing to worry about.  

If you missed last Thursday's post, we have at least one element checked off the list, with our new Chevy Volt taking the place of the totaled one.  There are still a couple of loose ends to tie up with insurance, but at least we have our own car again.  Packing is coming along nicely--better than expected, truth be told.  We're making enough of the preemptive phone calls that almost all of the pieces are in motion--I'm leaving Comcast to Andy in exchange for having done all of the electric, water, gas, and new fiber internet.  

One thing that we talked about in therapy, though, was this idea of 10% strategies.  Basically, there might be some stress reduction strategies that help more than others, but those little strategies that maybe decrease your stress by 10% still have merit, particularly if you're doing enough of them.  I have an infinity cube at my desk (lovingly 3-D printed by my buddy Chris) that I will continuously roll over in my hand, channeling the nervous jittery energy out into one place.  This especially helps at work when I might be on camera and thus unable to pace around my cube.  I've been thinking about what kinds of different strategies that I have.  

• Take a nice bath
• Read a chapter of a fun book
• Write
• Create a to-do list instead of juggling an internal one
• Watch a movie
• Do a meditation on my Headspace app
• Comfort eat
• Exercise

Each of those have different weights that vary by the day--watching a movie tends to be more of a 20% for example, but recently anything that "takes too much time" becomes a little more stressful by itself.  I feel in these times that I run on a frantic energy, kinetic energy, that as long as I keep moving I can stay moving, but as soon as I stop I'm doomed to suddenly feel the weight of everything and find myself immediately overwhelmed.  This means that sometimes I end up trying to multitask on my relaxing, which can easily be counterproductive.

But while I was packing, I found these:

So it was time for a bit of YouTube, a bath bomb, and some mystery sponge creatures.  

It's so tempting to start "helping" them

And we end up with a manta ray, a shark/dolphin, a squid, and a marlin.  I remember thinking these were the coolest things growing up.  I remember my brother and I trying to guess what they were going to be, comparing against the back of the package to the possible options.  It's simple; it's silly; but it brings me joy.  

The meditation app has been especially helpful in some of this, because the whole point of the app itself is that in order to be successful at it, I have to stop and be still for ten minutes.  I have to be still and aware of my body for that time, which is completely antithetical to that kinetic energy principle.  I know that I need that.  The kinetic energy principle has served me in the past, but the downside is I don't realize how exhausted I am until something is ready to crack.  It hit me pretty hard at the end of last week, when sitting down to eat dinner (as opposed to bites between packing) turned into a surprise two hour nap.  At least it wasn't a fever this time, which my body has resorted to in the past when I refused to listen.

I'm ready for the denouement, that final act where all of the plot threads that have been lined up suddenly come together, the point where all of this preparation falls into place.  My own kinetic energy is spinning in place sometimes, but it is also the chain that gets the cart to the top of the hill to realize its potential energy so that we can start events rolling down to roller coaster track.  Andy and I are at that precipice, where soon the momentum of events will be out of our hands in a lot of ways.  I'm looking forward to that, to letting certain things just start happening.  I feel a huge relief once we get to that point with my medical decisions--being able to relinquish some of that control into all of the pieces that you have carefully set in place is a huge relief.  

It's almost time to rest.  All of that anticipation is coming into something else, where life will be different afterwards.  I called this the year of the precipice earlier this year, and I can't help but feel the weight of that because I know it's not done yet.  But we're rolling soon enough.