A little air

Just coming off of about two brutally busy months of work and starting to breathe a little easier, or to state it more accurately, focusing on long-term existential anxieties instead of “Why the fuck won’t my colleagues agree with me?”

I am normally fairly good? I think? somewhat effective? at compartmentalizing my emotions and not taking them out on others, but the past few months showed me that I am more vulnerable to stereotypical forms of emotional spillover than I thought. I shot down a few good ideas and acted unnecessarily smug when proven right. I made the right decision for the wrong reason and took credit anyway. Etc.

With a little more daylight in my schedule, I chatted with a new friend today who is about to embark on a cool life project that will put him in a fast-paced new environment with a bunch of strangers. We talked about the idea of how everyone has a different stress response and how it’s important to know what yours is so that you can differentiate the symptoms from the disease and warn others when you aren’t feeling like yourself.

My stress response is critical analysis and being a hater.

If you master your own stress response, then you can treat stressful situations as a little game where the challenge is to try to do anything other than your stress response. You win by resisting the impulse to flip the fuck out and instead projecting optimism and grace. The strategy is to figure out what kind of behavior is the precise opposite of your stress response and then do that.

My anti–stress response is to be an absolute class act and regard everyone with gratitude.

This is a very difficult response to deploy on people who seem to be investing their utmost effort in performing their ineptitude, but you have to try.

Not even gonna proofread this.