A Little Rambling

Life can be a mess. It comes with stress and frustration and sadness and heartache and worry. It's easy to get bogged down in all that and let it overrun your mind. There are various ways to get out of such a funk, many of which include some form of sugar, but they don't always work. There's only one thing for me that never fails to make me feel better. A hug. Not just a little hug, but a long, tight hug. There are studies that show that pressure (a good, physical kind) can relieve stress. Hugs are healthy! When I am miserable, the one thing I really want is someone who will just hold me tight, for as long as I need. Even though nothing else in my circumstances has changed, I feel so much more able to tackle it all post-hug. Maybe it's the feeling of someone caring for me, despite everything else. Maybe it's the warmth of friendship. Maybe it's just the act of being touched so nicely. But a good hug will always give me a good pick-me-up. (The best h...

Or maybe I just have a compulsive disorder obsession. Except my OCD extends more into correctness than alphabetical order, so I like the original acronym just fine. I am not really OCD, except when it comes to planning. This can be both good and bad. The good side is, I tend not to forget details and things are nicely planned and everyone has fun. The bad is twofold: one, if plans derail, I tend to stress; two, I end up getting landed with a lot more planning. Since I enjoy it, it's not all that bad, but it is nice to sometimes get to do something I didn't work out all the details of. But I really get picky about details when I'm having people over or planning an event. I want to know times and numbers and prices and details and have the answer to all the questions before people even come up with the questions. I love punctuality, and being late stresses me out. I like things neat and packaged and ready to go. Sometimes, this kills the idea of spontaneity, but I can...

A lot of things could answer this post. (ha! what's new?) School stresses me out. Boys stress me out. Not being able to cross things off to-do lists because of factors outside my control stresses me out. Dishes in the sink after dinner (or lunch on a day off) stress me out. They have to be done before I can relax. (caveat: this doesn't always seem to apply at my parents' home, a fact that bugs my mother no end, I'm sure) Being lost while driving, especially in the dark, REALLY stresses me out. I get snappy and hot tempered and teary and I feel very bad for whoever is in the passenger seat trying to reassure me that the world is not ending. Class piano threatening to postpone my graduation AND keep me from taking the one class I want to take is stressing me out, which is itself a derivative of another major stressor - playing the piano in front of people. Seems like an odd fear for a piano teacher, or? For some reason, whenever I am asked to play in front of anyone, I...