Love Song / Sara Bareilles
the other day i was wondering to myself how i would get all this cortisol out of my life. i often wonder this while sitting with poor posture over my keyboard fuming over some thing or another that i’m stressed about. i’m pretty easily stressed sometimes, a fact that i’m not proud of. i blame it on medical school, it is RUINING my sex life.
but see, according to the guy who plays a doctor on tv, if i want to get rid of tummy fat, i need to reduce the cortisol. and stress causes cortisol. and instead of taking miracle drugs that the only miraculous thing to their credit is that people are stupid enough to buy them, i’ve decided that i need to learn how to get better at handling stress.
the first part of this plan is usually to make sure that you have exercise in your life. i have this. 3 times a week (sometimes 4) i hit up the local gym so that i can sweat all over the machines and practice dying on the stairmaster, treadmill, and stationary bike for 50 minutes. and on the “off” days i go for a lengthy walk, AND only one of those walks can be with an ice cream store at the end of it. so i’ve pretty much got that part covered.
the second part is to get enough sleep. i’m pretty covered at 7 hours on most nights with 8-9 on the weekends. i generally get up around the same time every morning. this one isn’t an issue, so i’ve got that one covered too.
the third part is learning relaxation techniques. i know how to open a bottle of wine and drink it, but no one seems to have this one count. i dance to music when i think no one is there, and sing whether people are listening or not. but what they seem to want is for me to sprawl out on the floor in yoga poses or listen to calming music in a sitting pose while not falling asleep. if i can do either of these things while drinking red wine i’m totally set. i just need to find time to do these silly things, which leads to…
learning how to say no. which i just haven’t mastered. i generally say yes until one day that last straw is set down and i lose it. i get so mad over the silliest little thing that i feel silly about it later and then make up for it by saying yes to a bunch of things that i shouldn’t have anyway. it is a messy cycle. it is pretty glaringly obvious where i can start de-stressing: learning how to say no.
and sometimes learning how to say no means not doing something that sounds fun BECAUSE i won’t have enough time to sit on the floor with a glass of wine, spread eagle, listening to Bach. or, you know, convincing a certain someone to quit medical school so that he can become my sex slave. either way.
I hate med school. It ruins everyone.