How I destress.

This topic is something complex to think and write about because I'm not good at destressing...

This last month has been the hardest of the last year. Harder than the first fourish months where I was out of work and in treatment. Harder than the schedule I carried during my last semester of my undergrad

What's interesting about it is the fact that really great things have actually taken place but it's how I've handled them that has caused the month to be so hard.

In the last 3.5 weeks I left my job of 4 years and started a new job, using my degree, at a great organization. I finished my bachelor's degree and I got into grad school. I feel like there's even more that have slipped my mind. 

The last 4 weeks have been SO stressful that I developed shingles. At under 30 I developed a disease people in their 50s and 60s are warned about. It's a disease that does have a vaccine but insurance does not cover it for anyone under 50.

Granted, I do have the foundation for developing the problem because I had chicken pox twice before I was one. But what brought it on was the extreme amount of stress and how overwhelmed I've felt. 

I thought I was allowing myself to be stressed and my body was telling me differently. Instead the stress built up until it came out of me in the form of a disease. 

So, I'm learning ways to de-stress. I've gone back up in modified sessions with my therapist and I've been given permission to do yoga. I have to leave the issues of work at work, as much as my mind will let me, and make sure I engage in social activities on weekends. 

Because stress urges me to push everyone back and I'm learning the only real way to relieve it is to let people in.

I am officially a college graduate

As of today I can add credentials after my name. In two months I am entering grad school. Both of these are just milestones on the path to my dream job.

I don't know that everyone has a single dream job; that would make an individuals life static and people change, their dreams change. But, this being said, I do have a current dream job.

My dream is to spend time traveling overseas and having time to spend at each location, so I can absorb the culture and see things from the locals point of view.

Realistically this cannot be done with some form of financing and I have my own. I want to be a psychologist for the Department of Defense and travel to the different bases overseas. This job is not a means to an end for me, a way to get to the places I want to visit, but the fact that I will be able to see different areas of the world does make the job even more enviable.

I want to work with the family centers on the military bases and work with the family of the service member. Military life is hard, not just on the service member but, on the family who is innately part of the life as well.

I want to be part of the process of building healthier families for our service members.

cheating

favorite tv show; I don't have cable because I don't have time to watch tv and make it worth it.

But, I do have internet and I love to watch anything available to my fingertips. LOVE IT.

Mainstream television? My favorite is Once Upon A Time in Wonderland.

And Netflix, I love Netflix.

In the middle of the night

I love the middle of the night when I'm wide awake and the rest of the world is sleeping. It feels so quiet, peaceful, and the lack of activity envelopes you like a blanket.

This isn't something I experience too often anymore; I work a morning job so I go to bed early.

But those papers I have to write sometimes give me the opportunity. There's so much promise in the quiescence and the words flow to paper. I work on as the rest of the world is at rest and it feels like those stolen moments were there just for me to use.

How time flys

I have hit an important milestone this week; I have both finished my Bachelor's degree and been accepted into grad school. One chapter is ending so another may begin and, because of this, I'm contemplating the journey that was my undergrad.

When I told my supervisor about my acceptance to Argosy University we talked about the journey and I said I feel like I've finally, finally, come full circle and that I'm where I'm supposed to be.

5 years ago I was studying at Arizona State University and was doing the research for grad programs. But I lost sight of my goals and, even though the move across the country could have been a right choice, the decision to not pursue the completion of my bachelor's degree was the wrong one.

I do not begrudge this.

4 years ago I was offered a position at a prominent eating disorder facility in Arizona and I planned the trek back. This time I made the ultimate decision to stay put and, although this was the right choice, I became part of the nearly unemployed workforce in Maryland; I could not find a regular job.

5 years is such a long time and I wonder where the time has gone. I cannot say the time flew by because I felt every change, every heart ache, every loss; there is too much weight in the intervening years to feel like the summer of 2008 was just yesterday.

Looking at my journey and knowing I have finally come full circle and am where I'm supposed to be, I wonder if I feel this way because I met a long ago goal, or if the interveining years were a campaign of some sort to bring me back into myself. Maybe it was the act of 'stepping' into my own skin that finally allowed me to realize I am where I belong.

the most important gift I've given and have received

This is so hard! Trying to qualitate something I've done/given from another person's point of view? I think that's why the most important gift we can give anyone is the gift of our time. Not only the chronological aspect of being at an event but actually being present in the moment with them. I would hope that I've been able to do this for others

It's so hard to center oneself and focus on the 'here and now' so, when a person is able to do that with me, I feel like time has stopped for just a moment.

It's the time I was given to find the ground after I had lost it, having friends take a moment to help me find my way.

It's the time I was able to give to my step-father before he died.

It's the times people have put their neck on the line because they believed in me.

It's the small moments of victory that, no matter how insignificant they may seem, create lasting memories.