- I feel almost NO stress
- I sleep better
- I am certainly not as tired when I get home at the end of the day
- I want to sit and talk to Erich when I get home and NOT disappear to someplace quiet and alone
- Creativity is oozing out of me.
- I am really happy
I think you can easily imagine the items 2- 4 occurring due to the first item on the list. But the 5th item was a big surprise to me and the 6th is a wonderful bonus.
How do I know.. I am wanting to learn new things, play at experimenting with patina's, making new bowls, writing new software for the fun of it (Yeah, I do that).
And here is why I think this has happened - look at item ONE on the list. STRESS. There are plenty of studies that show long term stress is not good for us, go look it up. But I don't think many people recognize the changes in them when it is gone. We can work to reduce stress and these gradual changes might not be as apparent.
BUT when it GOES AWAY suddenly, it is amazing what can happen mentally; I think the physical changes do take a bit more time to occur and be noticed.
This is why I am calling it the unbearable noise of stress. It was a constant grating sound that blocked all sorts of ideas, thoughts, and emotions.
When I would take a vacation, I could feel it start to lift and then returned to work and it was back.
Over weekends and the occasional 3-Day, I would never really get away from it
Going out with friends, the stress of work and work itself became an ongoing topic that even I hated to discuss but it always came up.
And then it was gone.
And then I noticed it was gone.