The Vicious Circle of Stress

I consider myself quite a relaxed person. Sure, I have my ups and downs like everyone else, but on the whole I don’t stress out about things too much. Why worry about things you can’t change? is usually my motto. Unfortunately the last month has been too stressful for me and as a result, I have let my self care routine slide.

A little over a month ago I volunteered to take redundancy at work. I’m still in my job until the end of the year, after which I will have to get a new job (or ideally I will have found a new job before then so I can start at the beginning of the next year). Consequently, I have been busy job hunting over the last month and a bit and this has proven to be quite stressful. I don’t think anyone would find job hunting a relaxing activity, to be honest.

Usually when I am busy and stressed, I turn to writing. I write on my blog here or I work on short stories or my novel. Unfortunately, writing has gone right out of the window this time. Part of this is because I spent all of September editing my latest novel so I took a bit of a break from writing to fill my creative well. And it seems that I am still filling it. I just couldn’t get back into writing at all. Whether it was because I just needed to sit down and do it or whether my stress made me lose all enthusiasm; the fact remains that I have been woefully neglecting my own self care.

Writing is my self care. I generally love sitting at my laptop and letting my thoughts flow through my fingers, creating sexy stories or thoughtful blog posts. And for the last month or so that self care has been gone. During the most stressful period of my life in a long time I have let my self care routine go. No wonder I am stressed!

The problem with stress is that it creates a vicious circle. I am stressed, so I don’t write. But because I don’t write, I get more stressed. Which reduces my motivation for writing even further. And so forth and so on. And because I am a sex blogger, and my stories are erotic, it generally helps when my libido is robust. Of course, stress reduces my libido as well, so not having had sex much doesn’t help my writing either.

But now we’re here. I am writing again. I am at least writing this blog post and I’ll take anything I can get. Thanks to May More who told me on Twitter to go and write a blog post. Sometimes you can get stuck in a rut and you just need that little push to get you going. That was May’s tweet today. I’m not sure how long the motivation will last, but I am happy I have been able to write this. I may attempt to write a sex toy review as well while I’m at it.

October was going to be the month in which I would finish editing my novel so I could finally self publish it. Beyond opening the Word document, glancing at it and closing it again I have not even looked at the novel. I just don’t have the energy to fix things. It will come. I have to be patient with myself and not add more stress to my already stressful life. Being kind to myself is also a form of self care.

Today is Mental Health Day. Looking after your mental health is so important, but sometimes we are too caught up in our own stress and busyness that we can’t take care of ourselves. It is good, in times like those, to have friends and family members who can help us out and push us through. I am happy I spoke up on Twitter today about how I felt. I am happy May suggested writing for Sex Bloggers for Mental Health. I may not have stuck to the theme of the week, but I definitely feel better after having written all this. Do follow that link (or click on the logo at the bottom of this article) to see what other sex bloggers are talking about.