The Stress/Relaxation Continuum.

I admit it. I’ve been a leisure glutton this weekend. Now, finally at 3:37 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, reality is knocking on my forehead and I have to get to work. I tell myself if I relax on the weekend by playing Oblivion most of Saturday afternoon, napping and drinking a beer in the hot tub, then I am better off because I am happy. Indeed, I am happy and relaxed. This, in theory, will help me face the horrors of the coming week. If nothing else, I’ve been having a grand old time.

Yet there is a cost to this. I blew off stuff that needed doing. That stuff still needs doing. That stuff will have to be done. In the stress/relaxation continuum, the time you take to relax creates more stress. So you have to do a relaxation dance for short periods of time and then jump back on the deadline treadmill so that you don’t get so far behind that only the end of civilization can save you (of course that would cause its own stress). As long as you aren’t gormandic about your relaxation, this seems to work.

Really, when we get rid of one stress, we only trade it for something else. If we hate our jobs, we quit. This ends the work stress but creates no money stress (and maybe homeless stress or live-with-the-parents stress). If we kill the person who causes us stress, we get jail stress (and unwanted same-sex relationship stress). If we get fed up with politics here and move to France, we get French stress (perhaps the worst kind of all).

So I’m making excuses for my laziness yesterday and my half-heartedness today. But I’m back at it now and all will be better.