You know what's not a great way to deal with stress: adding a starred email in your gmail reminding yourself to blog about stress.
This week has been both expectedly and unexpectedly busy. I knew the house hunt would keep me busy, but somehow other things kept happening and I ended up having 4 major things on my mind yesterday and today. And by 'major things' I do mean potentially life-changing things, even if that particular potential isn't very large. The house thing went away today as I officially decided not to make an offer on an apartment that was borderline perfect, but too pricey for what it was. Two other things I won't mention by name here, but one of them had its priority lowered as it's going to be a long-term thing, and the other thing I'm hoping to resolve tomorrow. Bloody hell.
The final thing is, oddly enough, my girlfriend being on holiday. She's out of internet range and I've gotten so used to sending her dumb chat messages throughout the day that I find myself oddly unrelaxed. This usually lasts only a few days, and consciously realizing this today kind of nullified it. Which is nice for now, and she'll be back soon anyway.
It's less than a week since I wrote about happiness and blenders, yet this post and my mindset of the past few days seems miles away from what I wrote back then. Keeping perspective is important but becomes more and more difficult as things pile up. I know I've about reached my limit this week, but I also know that I didn't make any rash decisions and managed to keep things sane. The more often I do this, the better I'll get at it. I hope.
I can't help but think back at the moments of ultimate calm in my past, only attainable on cycling trips without a schedule. Actually, it's even more specific than that: I only ever felt ultimately calm during the one cycling trip, the first Spirit of Japan. It was the only time where I was completely unbound and free, with no schedule or plan for the future, cycling from place to place on the cheap with no immediate risk of money running out and no greater ambition than finding a nice place to put my tent for the night. The incredible purity of that feeling is something I will never experience again in my life. Because I've already experienced it once, and I have a proper life now to get back to that I wouldn't give up for anything. Even if I did, it wouldn't be the same, because it wouldn't be the first free cycling trip; it would be the second. That feeling of utter freedom is one I gladly re-experience in my mind from time to time, remembering how I became the person that I am now. The me of now has no regrets about the past.
Ah, what a great feeling that was. Just writing about it has de-stressed me.