Perspective

Inevitably everything has started to pile up beyond my own control. I'm a 'yes person'; I like to take things on and flirt with new territories, but it can sometimes fall down on top of me as I try to balance the everything that is my life. I'm busy getting involved with things, spreading myself pretty thinly over the 18 hours or so that I spend awake each day, and I found myself ready to burst at the seams in the latter part of last week.

I was about to sign us up for a cycling sportive on the day before my birthday in August. I thought 'hooray!' at the opportunity to spend the last day of my 25th year cycling gleefully around Yorkshire, followed by a meal in our favourite restaurant with one of their awesomely huge servings of STP and ice cream in lieu of a birthday cake. Then I remembered the other commitments that I've got going on between now and October. Two marathons (I signed up for the Yorkshire Marathon at 7am on the morning it opened, oops), a potential month spent doing research in Stockholm, a whole month away at conferences, putting on a conference at the department in York, taking workshops for the Strange Bedfellows programme, confirmation onto my PhD programme and the viva voce that will follow, doing a PhD, and organising my very own wedding.

I tried to rationalise all of this, the one step at a time sort of pep talk, but anyone who has planned a wedding or done a PhD or trained for a marathon will know that it doesn't work like that; it is all-consuming, almost an obsession (in my case, definitely an obsession), and it requires 100% of yourself to see it through. Forgetting the travelling, the conference, the workshops and the confirmation, that only leaves 33% of me to focus on each of these tasks; I got stuck on how I could possibly be wholehearted in my attempts at these things with only my one heart, and then I started to feel sick and overwhelmed and utterly stressed out, which is never a productive state to be in.



But it only takes a minute really to get out of the downwards spiral that is stress. It builds up in a moment but it can also be tackled in a moment, given the right words or a hug from a good friend or just a bit of happy news. In my case it took a good friend, and not a hug but the right words, and the sun dawned on the horizon and all was right in the world. The key was perspective. I was suddenly ashamed at the way I'd taken my 'problems' to be at the centre of the universe, when in fact I can't think of a situation I'd rather be in. Stressed about the fact that I get to marry someone awesome in September in a day put together just for us, stress about the dream-come-true that is my PhD and all the magic it entails, stress about running around some of the world's loveliest places while I think and breathe and enjoy just being me. Stress is such an ego-centric issue, so undoubtedly caused by too much thinking inwards and not enough looking out at the world and your own place in it.

I don't know how long it will be before I find myself stressed out to breaking point again, but I hope that when it happens a kind friend will take me aside and ever-so-subtly remind me how awesome all of this is. 18 hours a day of doing all the things I love - writing, running, reading, thinking, talking, eating, laughing, cooking. We even got a dishwasher so I don't have to wash up any more - one less thing to stress out about. So now I'm off to stretch, shower and eat my breakfast with a spring in my step for what will be today and all the greatness it could bring. And there's one last buckwheat muffin left for lunch, hurrah!