Lately, I’ve been stressing about a topic which, unfortunately, I can’t blog or tweet about.  (There go my primary methods of getting things off my chest!)  At times like this, I wish I could just magically transport myself to Disney World for a few much-needed laughs.  In fact, I think the clowns of Storybook Circus’ Giggle Gang would be just the cure.  Since they are oh-so-far away, though, I’ll just look at these photos and laugh at the funny memories of them.

First, the Giggle Gang arrives:

They’re not just there to entertain, though, they’re there to educate.  Yes, this is Clown University:

Today’s lesson: What do you do when you reach the end of your rope?

Answer: Seek out some friends to help you unwind!  (Preferably at Disney World.)

Thanks for the lesson (and the laughs), Giggle Gang!

Disclosure: I was invited to the New Fantasyland media event December 5th through 7th. Disney paid for my travel, our park tickets, room, and a few other items. I was able to take B along as my guest, but we paid for her own travel as well as an extra night in the resort. The opinions expressed above are my own.

I’ve got to find a better way to deal with stress.

The past week has been a stressful one.  Interestingly, it’s been a combination of issues that appear on my "not to blog about" list.  Work items, home issues, financials, etc.  So without my blog (or social media) venting ability, I relied on Old Faithful: Hold It All In And Suppress The Stress.  That worked beautifully.  If by beautifully you mean I woke up Sunday morning unable to get out of bed due to a horrible spasm in my upper back.

I took some ibuprofen, but that only turned the sharp pain into a dull, persistent ache.  I hoped that, as the day went on, it would vanish, but it didn’t.  The pain stuck around and expanded into my shoulders, neck, and even my right arm.

Monday, I woke up and I could hardly move my neck due to tight muscles.  As I write this, on Monday night, the pain remains and is currently shooting down the length of my arm again.

I need some stress-free time or, failing that, a better way of dealing with stress.  Because dealing with this back pain is stressing me out and you know what happens to me when I stress out… It’s a vicious cycle!

How do you deal with stress?

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’ve got about 10 hours worth of work to do and only 3 hours to do it in.  I come home from work, make dinner, spend a small amount of time with the kids, and get them into bed.  Then, I’ve got about 3 hours to get everything else done.  By “everything else”, I mean clean up from dinner, work on my blog post, and work on the various freelance projects I have to complete.  Add in a kid (or 2) waking up as I’m actually heading to be and I’ve gotten to sleep at about 1am every night this week.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I could sleep in, but B has this annoying habit of getting me up in the morning so I can go to my day job.  Sheesh!

There’s a mountain of things I’d like to do.  FollowerHQ needs some improvements, I’d like to read up on coding applications for Android devices, I’ve got my tie clip project, I still want to woke out a system to stream movies from our computer to our TV, and more.  This pile keeps calling to me, but I need to push it off.  The things I *have* to do keep draining time from the things I *want* to do.  I feel like I’m running on a treadmill at top speed and still slowly falling behind.  In short, I’m feeling overwhelmed and like I’m headed for a burnout.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What do you do when you feel overwhelmed?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #151

A few days ago, I felt like I was at the end of my rope.  So many stressful events happened one after another, pulling me in so many different directions that I just couldn’t take it anymore.  All I wanted to do was find a dark corner and hide from the world.  About the only thing that I felt like doing was playing Lego Batman on the Nintendo DS.

Last August, I wrote about NHL’s and my gaming addiction.  Since then, we’ve moved from Lego Harry Potter to Lego Indiana Jones and from that to Lego Batman.  I really like that Lego Batman lets you play in "Villain Mode" to help further their evil schemes… But more on that when I get around to reviewing the game.

I’ve found that, when I get stressed like this, I don’t function well.  All of my motivation to do that tasks that I need to do disappears.  Making myself complete them seems as hard as scaling a mountain.

Instead, I need escape from the situation.  Since I don’t have any friends locally, I can’t just head out with the guys.  Cooking is sometimes a stress reliever, but then I need to clean up from the cooking which adds more stress.  Watching TV will sometimes suffice, but I like being actively involved and feeling like I’m accomplishing something.

Enter video games.

Lego Batman isn’t so difficult that I’ll get frustrated by it.  And yet, it isn’t so simple that I feel like I’m not surmounting a challenge.  I can play it for a bit, allow my mind to forget all of my stressful thoughts for a time and feel like I’ve accomplished something.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What do you do when you’re stressed?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #142

There will be no blog post today.

Ok, there’s this one.  So I guess there *is* a blog post today.  But this one doesn’t count.

There’s been a lot of stress in my life recently.  I’ve been feeling like I need to be running at top speed 100% of the time just to keep from losing ground.  Check that.  I run at top speed 100% of the time and *STILL* lose ground.  What doesn’t help is that, at times of extreme stress like this, my brain reacts by shutting down.  I’ll need some serious decompression.  I’m craving it right now.

So, as I write this the night before you are reading it, I’m not feeling motivated to write a proper blog post.  Rather than rooting through photos to pull together an image-laden blog post followed by a 1am bedtime, I’m going to let my mind vegetate a bit.  I’m going to load up Lego Batman on the Nintendo DS and break some blocks.  (Surprising how therapeutic smashing virtual scenery is.)  Then, I’ll try to get to bed early.

Hopefully, this combination will let me release some stress so my brain will unfreeze and I can blog properly again.

Update: As I tried to post this, I encountered server problems. Forget the DS, I’m going right to bed!

How do you react to too much stress?