I Stress, You Stress, We All…
Happy Monday, everyone. I’ve spent a long weekend. You know, those weekends that feel long for all the wrong reasons? Yeah. One of those.
I’ve come to a realization. Apparently I’m way tense and need to chill out.
Let me back up.
I got a computer game as a reward for finishing the fifth book. (Yes, you have to reward yourself as a writer. Otherwise it’s all thankless drudgery. Well, not ALL thankless drudgery. There is some glee. And cookies.) The game’s a biofeedback thing, so you clip these little dealies to your fingertips and it measures your heartrate and galvanic skin response.
I have absolutely no trouble with the part of the game that calls for “joyful energy”, meaning that your heartrate’s up. When it comes to relaxing, however…how can I put this? Oh yeah.
I suck.
Apparently I’m wound a lot tighter than even I realized. I’d like to say it’s the books, and that finishing the series will fix it, but that would be a big fat stinkin’ lie. The truth of the matter is, I’ve become accustomed to racing at a certain level of pressure, and I appear to have lost the knack of just chilling out.
Part of that is the innate control-freakery in my nature. If I relax the world will end! My worrying staves off disaster! If I worry everything will be okay! The last may sound counterintuitive, but it’s common among children from alcoholic-type families. One kid turns into the worrier, another turns into the overachiever, and another turns into the “baby,” the one who has to be “protected” from the dysfunction. I also stand in as black sheep in the fam. Pulling double duty, that’s me.
The upshot is, it’s very easy for me to go off the deep end when it comes to raising my blood pressure by worrying about absolutely EVERYTHING and I DO MEAN EVERYTHING. I’m sure I would worry about the sun falling out of the sky if I could find a shadow of a chance that it would.
So, I’m focusing on the relaxing bits of the computer game and trying to relax without a heavy bag or a bottle of wine. Maybe it will even help with the insomnia, though I’m not expecting miracles. I’ve been insomniac ever since I was five, I’m not thinking stress has anything to do with it.
On a slightly different note, right now I’m reading Night Life, by Caitlin Kittredge, fellow PacNW author. I think it’s due out sometime later this year, and she is SO GIVING ME A SIGNED ARC. Because I am really, really enjoying this book. St. Martin’s very kindly asked if I’d give a cover quote, and I’m looking forward to finishing the draft (so I know what happens next) and giving a bust-up, bang-out quote. Because I’ve laughed out loud several times, reading Night Life, and frequently read some of the dialogue aloud. Always the sign of a good book.
So this week it’s first-pass pages, going through a time-travel draft for my bud Nina Merrill, and getting the quote out for St. Martin’s. Not to mention doing some Serafim drafts (sorry, Josh, I know I’ve been bad. I’m working on it.)
See? Nothing to get stressed over.
Yeah. Right.
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