Stress: The Wages of Work

I’ve been suffering from a stress related stabbing pain at the back of my head right at the bottom of my skull/top of my spine. When it comes, it feels like I’m being stabbed with every heartbeat. What’s the cause? Probably work and side hustle worries.

I don’t remember where I read it, but stress is a real killer. We had a geography teacher in school who suffered from stress and stank of cortisol related perspiration and young kids like dogs can smell fear – we made his life a misery (as happens to some teachers) and we put him to an early grave. He was signed off with stress related health problems and died soon after.

Stress is a killer! And that’s one motivation for me to have as little of it in life as possible. Not only that – but I don’t want to be in a vulnerable position in my middle-aged years – you know how some people live precarious lives, from one paycheck to the next and their boss knows this and has them by the. I don’t want to be like that at all, and I suspect my readers would be in the same boat.

So, despite my best intentions to avoid all stress, recently, I’ve been inviting it into my life through doing full 40+ hour weeks in work (working morning, noon, night as required). There’s the stress of kids, school, parenting and homeownership that are a baseload of stress with occasional tremors. I’ve also have some extra excitement in the form of the side hustle taking off but not without it causing some problems. I don’t want to give too much away but it’s involved a level of stress that I’m maybe not comfortable with – and that could be a cause of this stabbing pain.

Luckily, I have two weeks of holidays to start soon and that should help remove some of the cortisol from my synapses and recharge my batteries.

Choosing the path less stressful

It’s not that stress is inherently bad – stress is fine, it’s the strain of it that causes the damage. A Young’s Modulus if you like. I find arguing with people in real life very, very stressful (so I try not to do it) and playing poker with a £10 buy-in is a lot more stressful than watching my investments drop £10k in a day (as happened earlier this month).

If Financial Independence can buy us anything, it should buy us less stress. The freedom to be your own boss is one reason I am still working – I have the privilege to say I’ll work or not work and I’m somewhat in demand for my services (16 years without more than a day between jobs). One hour of my work paid for our trip to Nando’s this week when we couldn’t be bothered cooking – that’s not exactly frugal but it was a nice change from the ordinary and it was the Little Lady’s birthday. On one level, every penny’s a prisoner but choosing to get worked up by the cost of it all – does more harm than good.

Relaxing and Calming Down

The stabbing pain hasn’t been there for a few days and it seems like I’m recovering – but I don’t want it to happen again. I’ll need to be careful and watch the signs of stress and think of ways to reduce stress. I had thought of going to get a neck/back massage, except I’m too busy with work this week to do so (the irony eh?).

Thanks, GFF.