Blood and Energy and Eustress

I learned in my Wednesday night class about the heart and how our blood moves. Elementary stuff, but I can always use a reminder. I thought about how the highway mirrors the arteries--nothing but movement can happen in the major ones, and only in the capillaries can the blood drop off or pick up anything, like how we have to get off the main roads to get food, gas, etc. Incidentally, capillaries are so small that the blood cells have to move through single file. I find this darling. Intimate. And dang, everything in us is so intricate it's a miracle we're not all on life support. I asked whether it's true that the blood can redistribute, like when after a big meal someone says, "All my blood has rushed to my stomach." It's true that arteries can get bigger according to the body's needs, sending more blood where it's needed.

That's rather how I feel about my energy level and attention lately. I have to funnel a lot into teaching and being a student, and since I have a fixed amount, that means less goes to my dear sweet thesis. I feel like I'm in a long-distance relationship with my thesis. Yearning and constantly foiled and distracted by more immediate but less ultimately important concerns. I've been doing a new thing for the last few months where I focus on the reasons I get stressed or upset, because the reasons are almost always good. Now, for instance, the publishing practicum is stressing me out (already!). That's good because it's going to serve me extremely well in the job market. The job search is stressful, and that's good because I'm striving to contribute to society and be financially sound. My novel class is time-consuming, but I can't even enumerate the ways that class is awesome. Teaching is a stressor, but I'm so glad to have a relatively easy and often very enjoyable job on campus. AWP is a short-term stressor, but I'm lucky, we all are, to have the chance to go, and it's always so fun. So, I'm happy about almost all of the things that are giving me neck-and-shoulder pain. I learned in high school that distress is "bad stress" and eustress is "good stress." The only example of eustress they ever gave was "planning a wedding." But I htink almost all stress in a healthy life is basically eustress. If we're stressing over something, it's because we care about that part of our life and value it. You should try thinking this way when you're really stressed. I think it applies to most people. And heck, if most of your stressors aren't good things (family, job, school, travel plans, projects you're passionate about, relationships you value), then maybe you should reconsider whether they're worth your stress at all.