Stress. Stress. Stress.

I realized yesterday that Spring Break is only a week and a half away. You'd think that would make me feel more relaxed, but it doesn't. It just reminds me of all the things that I need to do before Break, and I stress. Does the stress help? No. Does it magically make it go away? No. Does it help me get things done more efficiently? Heavens, no! Do I still somehow feel this uncontrollable urge to stress myself silly? Of course I do. I am obviously stupid.

When I stress, I ignore things. I hyper focus on the stress stimulus, and pretend nothing else exists. The dishes go unwashed, my bedroom becomes buried under mountains of laundry, email is unanswered, Internet forums I'm supposed to be administrating are forgotten. Thank goodness I have such a wonderful roommate who feeds me, or I'd quit eating on top of it all. So anyway, last night I decided enough with the stress! So instead of staying up way past my bedtime studying for the literature exam I had today, I stayed up way past my bedtime cleaning my room searching for my PDA. That�s right, because that was just oh so much more productive than, say, studying. Or sleeping, for that matter, is sleeping not important anymore? When did SLEEP become a leisure activity!? Pah.

The problem, as I see it, is that I�m completely incapable of dealing with a stressful event without stressing. It�s as though I feel obligated to stress, so as not to disappoint my exam/financial aid application/job application/and what have you. I mean, here is this terrible, stress-generating thing - how can I just look at it and say, �Eh, you don�t bother me at all. You are nothing.� It would completely undermine this stress inducer�s entire reason for existence! It would be like going up to gravity and saying, �People won�t really float away if you don�t show up for work tomorrow.� The horror! I could never be so cruel.

In a completely random subject change, I was just browsing the beliefnet forums, as I am wont to do when I am bored. I followed links in a random fashion (if someone says something intelligent, I pull up their profile and read the other threads they�ve posted in) and came across a rather silly discussion in the �Wicca Challenge and Critique� area. Here, a lovely woman named Windsinger responded to a challenger�s proclamation that �JESUS is risen and very much alive today.� She said, �According to the law, if a person is alive, he is not dead. If Jesus is alive, he could not have died for me, or if he did, that death is now pointless because it was undone.� What is one to do with that kind of logic? How tempting it is to trot on over to one of the �Christianity Challenge and Critique� forums and present this little observation to the unsuspecting masses. But no, I am not so evil as that, so I contented myself with a good belly laugh and moved on. Wouldn�t life be so much more exciting if I wasn�t such a well-behaved young lady?

And speaking of religion, the happy little church I went to a few weeks back? They sent me a letter! I thought it was the sweetest thing. I showed it to my mother (she was shocked that I had gone to church, I wonder if she regretted having called me a heathen?) and promised to take her if she comes to visit me when I�m staying in that area this summer. I feel like it�s the least I can do, since their congregation was kind enough to restore my faith in the sort of church community I remembered from my childhood and send me a really nice letter!