You have to learn to pace yourself
Pressure
You’re just like everybody else
Pressure
You’ve only had to run so far
So good
But you will come to a place
Where the only thing you feel
Are loaded guns in your face
And you’ll have to deal with Pressure…. Billy Joel
November 8, 2019 5:15PM
Dear Reader, Earlier this week, Wednesday, I woke up with that feeling of anxiety. It was 6:30 AM. I slept OK.. I woke up a couple times which is pretty normal for me, but I fell asleep again in 10-15 minutes. No big deal. I got almost 7 hours total and 50 minutes of deep sleep. But as the light of day crept into my office there it was. I think you know the feeling Dear Reader. The uncomfortable gnawing in the gut. Looking at my calendar, I started in on a project. At around 9;30, emails and messages were arriving that were not pleasant on my brain. “This needed to be fixed” a problem-client with self-admitted OCD declared in the first email. She wants the layout on a batch record to look like a work of art. Now a batch record goes through many hands in the factory as it moves through production. At the end of the process, it really is dirty. I mean it’s stained and looks like something pulled out of a filthy dumpster. It’s the order of the copy and instructions that matter. But not when you are OCD. “This line needs to be thick. This line needs to be thin” This is like the 5th revision. “Oh, Shit…my temperature’s rising. Oh, here’s another message reminding me that he wanted the Peru documents. ” My always talking brain” was telling me that I needed to jump on those, but they weren’t the priority.
A phone call, another phone call. I don’t answer because if I did I would never get anything done. They were coming in like the trains at Grand Central Station. My practice is to call them back end of day or put them on the “to do” for the next morning and limit the time on the call.
More Pressure. It’s now 10:15 AM. I must get Deb up and push her to get dressed. At 1 PM, I knew I was hypertensive and the anxiety was not plateauing.
I got up. I went in the living room with my sound suppressing headphones with DeBussy (afternoon of a fawn) playing and sat in my recliner. I strapped the Omron Digital monitor on my arm, sat back, and here came the reading: 160/89. I started my rhythmic deep breathing. Gently drawing in the air deep into my lungs and exhaling steadily; relaxing my body as I let it out. It felt so good and DeBussy was helping. I opened my eyes slowly as if I was Rip van Winkle, asleep for ages. I wasn’t drowsy, I was relaxed. It was only 15 minutes. …… The reading was 132/82. Amazing Dear Reader; don’t you think? And Thank you for visiting with me.