Jurnal sproe, 01 Mei 16

What a beautiful mission statement. Well thought out and written. Would you mind if I borrowed your ideas for myself? If I may, remind yourself that the first few weeks are the hardest while purging all the yuck stuff from your system. God go with you. Regards, Sarah  

I have to admit, my job does not include a lot of stress, so I am very lucky there, but when we have more work than we can handle, I just plug along as best I can and what doesn't get done in my 8 hour day, doesn't get done. I might work an extra 1/2 hour or so for no pay, but no more than that unless I am getting the time off later that week. Once I leave work, I rarely think about it. I have too many other stressors in my life to think about! I really started back seriously on my diet last week but let myself have a cheat day yesterday, which I wasn't really doing before. I lost weight anyway, so I think I am going to have a Saturday cheat day as long as I am losing weight. 

No job, NO JOB is worth your health. Put yourself first, my friend! 

If your planned stress reduction strategies aren't making enough difference - and I hope they do - then I would certainly look for a new job. I was stuck in a very stressful job for a long time (until I retired) so I do understand that sometimes it can be virtually impossible to leave. I kind of got tripped up by wondering if a new job might be taking me from the frying pan into the fire. But really, if all your muscles are knotting up, that is very serious stress! I hope you find a solution that's good for you. 

Sproe I had an extremely stressful job with so much expected of me. Many say quit the job, etc. Sometimes it is more difficult than being to quit. Breathing in through your nose when you feel the stress in your body and out through your mouth - I noticed when I was unter extreme pressure I would forget to breathe. I was in sales with multiple daily deadlines, many people always expecting something from me, etc. You have to take care of yourself, I did it for 22 yrs - most of my identity came from it and how I viewed myself & achievements. Plus where I had made my "friends". YOU are the only person in a work situation that will care for you. At the end of the day, managers and others have to protect themselves & want what they want. Make sure and breathe, take a citris fruit and peel it - just for the scent. Also I put something I could touch to connect to "my life" not a picture, but a token of some sort that was from a time I loved and experienced joy. I would keep it in my desk drawer and pull it out and touch it when I needed to be able to mentally escape because I couln't from my desk.  

Thank you all. One of my problems is I'm on call 24/7. No, I'm not a doctor. I'm a network administrator for a city, which includes keeping things going for a police department, and a water utilities plant that have 24/7 employees. Friday night, actually early Saturday morning, through fire alarm went off in the computer room. One of my staff had the support phone and actually went on site, but he needed to call me to find out what to do. (There was no fire, but it continued to make noise). 3 hours later we had it under control, but it's very difficult to get back to sleep after something like that. Unfortunately things like that happen much too often. I often think the fact that they know they can call me makes it easy for them to not figure out on their own what to do. But oddly enough, it's not true emergencies that stress me out. It's the day-to-day always in crisis mode that is really wearing me down. I'm surprised we aren't all having strokes and heart attacks. There is a lot of absenteeism in other departments, some in ours, but we're all afraid to be out - it's just worse when you come back. I have a week and two days off starting this coming Friday. I'm looking forward to it and dreading what it will be like when I come back. Went to Asian buffet for lunch - special treat for working Saturday morning and then completing my homework from a certification program I'm in. Didn't do too badly, stuck mostly with sushi, string beans, pepper steak, and then fruit for dessert, instead of the usal ice cream. Need to get in a lot more steps today, so it's time to dust off tell treadmill.