It’s a weekday night. I’m sitting on the couch talking to Jen when I have a flash of insight and know I HAVE to write about this because maybe other people have felt it, too.
This year has been challenging. This is where I should say, “It was challenging because of this MAJOR issue that presented itself.” But that’s not true. It was challenging in the way that this part of your life tends to be challenging. On paper, it was a good year. No immediate relatives died. I have my job. The family is fine. The roof only blew off our house once. The challenges were the normal ones you face if you have a career and kids and a home and people you love in your life. My problem was I couldn’t shake The Crunch. Parents know The Crunch. It’s usually manageable, but when life throws a couple extra things into The Crunch, you get this feeling of, “Can I catch a break here?” I probably just need to accept that between now and when the kids are out and on their own, The Crunch will ebb and flow, and that’s OK because these are the good old days.
Recently, The Crunch became less crunchier. I won’t get into details here. I’ll share with you a personal barometer. When it feels like the whole world is crushing down on my head, I need an alarm to wake. My brain wants to keep sleeping. I suspect it wants to protect me. When the stress dips below a certain threshold, I wake up without an alarm an hour early, refreshed. I suspect this is because a non-exhausted brain remembers it is exciting to be alive. Recently, I started waking up before the alarm again. I know I am getting dangerously close to boring you with stories about my dreams, so I swear I will get to a point.
Talking to my wife on the couch, having powered through the worst of The Crunch 2024, I noticed I was actively looking for new things to stress about. I was suddenly VERY disappointed about everyday stuff. I was poking around at molehills in search of mountains. I was Stress Hunting for new stress to replace the old stress because … some demented part of me wanted it back?
What?
Why?
As always, I have theories. I think humans can adapt to most anything and achieve a new normal, in order to survive. We get used to things being a certain way, and sometimes we would prefer to have more of the same — even if the same is bad — than deal with adjusting to something new. Additionally, like with my foot pain, being in survival mode all the time absolves us of overcoming our fears and climbing actual mountains.
Because our minds are always looking for patterns and connecting dots, I’m thinking now of a night years ago in a house in the Hollywood Hills and a discussion with a friend over a bottle of pirate-endorsed rum. It was the type of conversation guys have when nobody's looking in which friendships are forged. My friend is incredibly immature (he makes childish jokes and pulls dumb pranks) but also incredibly mature (he has done more with his life than most will do with theirs). We were deep into our cups and our Descartes when he threw me a curve: What is the definition of maturity? This is what we settled on: Maturity is knowing what to care about and what no longer matters.
I think that holds up, and it says everything that needs to be said about Stress Hunting.
As always, I welcome your thoughts.
If you enjoyed this, you might like other things I wrote. You can read them here.