Archive for the ‘Stress’ category

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Why People Hate Computers – Let Me Count The Ways

September 28, 2009

I have just spent the last few hours trying to download and/or convert illustrations of a cheerful  pantoum to post in order to compensate for the somewhat grim pantoum I posted a couple of days ago.   (See e.g. “Pantoums – Hard Hard Hard – Overheard on the Esplanade”).

This has led me to an entirely new subject matter.

Why do people hate computers so much?  (Given all the marvelous things they do for us.)

Here’s my guess:

1.  Because they are too expensive to throw out the window.

2.  Because they are too heavy to throw out the window.  (Anyone they hit, if surviving, will undoubtedly sue you, and may also steal your passwords.)

3.  Because if you complain about them, you will sound both decrepit and curmudgeonly.  Anyone overhearing will say, in a calm, slightly amused voice, ‘why don’t you let me try?’ and will try to sit in your computer chair and take over your keyboard, all the while ignoring the curmudgeonly gritting of your (probably soon to be false) teeth.

4.  Because they lure you on with the possibility that whatever you are trying really might work this time if only you are patient and wait the ever increasing and decreasing and increasing  number of seconds of the download period.  Then, just as you get to what looks like almost the end of the download, they freeze again.

5.  Because there is no convenient place to hit your computer, and if you do, you’ll probably hurt your typing fingers.

6.  Because your eyes are burning, but you just can’t stop looking at the screen.

7.  Because you know that any email you may get at 1:02  a.m. is probably spam, but you can’t resist checking.  Like Mallory before Everest, you check your email (in both accounts) because it’s there, or at least, it may be there.

8.  Because you just checked your email and there was only spam.  And you just checked your other email and there wasn’t even spam.

9.  Because it really should have worked by now.  Under all the age-old and new age laws of despair and giving up and great things happening when you finally do surrender, and happy endings too, it really should have worked.   (Don’t computers read literature?  Self-help books?  Self-help E-books?)

10.  Because your whole life’s work is held hostage.  (By the way, what happened to your earlier life’s work on that old machine that died suddenly five years ago?)

If you would rather read books than e-books, and books with pictures at that, check out 1 Mississippi at link above.

P.S. sorry about the illustrated pantoum.  My computer and I will figure it out someday.

Categories: Stress, Uncategorized
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More on Unwinding – Sonnet

September 22, 2009

Yesterday, I posted about stressful Mondays, and the unwinding of that stress (or at least of some of it) by a view of sky and river.   That post was somewhat comic (I hope), but I realized I also had written a sonnet, Shakespearean,  of a slightly more serious nature on the same subject.  The poem doesn’t actually deal with Mondays, but it does describe some of the unwinding offered by the flow of sky and water.

Post-Eden

Before the sky, a lovely pale, a boy,
tall on glistening grass, tosses a ball,
and I wonder why it is that joy
is not simply inhaled.  Is it the Fall
that keeps us from feeling how it lines
the air we breathe?  Is it that first loss
that keeps us toiling within the confines
of our skins, unheeding unhidden cost?
A soft haze, like a blessing, nestles on
the sea, mutes the horizon, brings the far near.
So much within reach.  The brain wrestles on
its hardscrabble way, yet slowly fear
unwinds, diminished by sky, sea, view.
An inner hand makes the catch, more too.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

(I am linking this sonnet to Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.  They have a very active and supportive poetry community.)

Categories: poetry, Stress, Uncategorized
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Monday – Ten Signs That Yours Has Been Stressful

September 21, 2009

Monday – Ten Signs that Yours Has Been Stressful

1.         You have gone through four sticks of gum;  three that you just put in your mouth on the subway platform, one that you actually chewed earlier in your office.  Your office!

2.         Your eyes keep catching the eyes of the crazy muttering man sitting opposite you on the train–swollen, hooded, troubled eyes.  Even when you finally just shut your eyes, pretending to sleep, you can’t help peeking to see if he buys your little charade.  He doesn’t.   (Maybe it’s all the gum-chewing.)

3.         You begin to deconstruct Twilight in your head.   (“Deconstruct as in Harold Bloom and Jacques Derrida.)   You focus, for example, on the fact that “Bella Swan” must be named for (a) Belle, as in La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast), and (b) the Ugly Duckling.   And Edward Cullen is a combination of….. (a) Edward Scissorhands (you guess, not having actually seen the movie), and (b) cull as in the culling a herd, as in Edward in his vigilante days.   Then you actually begin to wonder about the symbolism of Jacob being a wolf.  But wasn’t Esau, Jacob’s brother, the “hairy man”…?

4.         The train stops for a long time in the tunnel.  Your jaw is getting seriously overextended. 

5.         When the conductor announces that the delay is due to a sick customer, you are genuinely relieved that the sick customer is not you.

6.         You really do not chew gum, you never chew gum.

7.         You step off the train onto a platform where a man sings the Flight of the Bumblebee in falsetto.  You are very glad that you will not be sitting opposite this man.

8.         All thoughts of blogging about political, social, artistic or poetic issues fly from your head and you wonder whether you couldn’t just post a picture of your cute little dog instead.  (You realize sadly that you don’t have a picture scanned.)

9.         Before taking that same cute little dog out for a walk, you hurriedly eat several slices of a kind of cheese you don’t much care for.  In an effort to assuage displaced guilt, you tear off some of every slice to give to the dog.

10.       When you finally take the dog out, you stop for a moment on the patio of a restaurant behind your building.  The restaurant has recently started playing elevator music, and before you realize what you are doing, your hips begin to twitch in time with the beat.

Agh!  You hate elevator music.  Worse than chewing gum!

Agh!

Feeling that all is surely lost—what’s happening to you?–you look out over the horizon.  The sky above the river is blue and pink and orange, the river below the sky is blue and blue and blue, a crescent of moon barely gleams through the spectrum like the most beautiful distinction possible, your dog’s eyes (you are carrying your dog through the restaurant patio) stare up at you in gratitude.   (Possibly for all the cheese.)

In less than a second, your hips let go of even the memory of those untoward twitches, and you walk straight and true out of range of the muzak, your forehead unwinding, your chest sighing, your tense jaw beginning, at last, to find peace.

Check out 1 Mississippi above for more about the peace of rivers.

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Overheard/ Seen

August 31, 2009

Overheard/Seen

1.  Overheard in a Grand Central Station tunnel:   “A woman scorned… she can be nasty, man.”

“Oh boy.  You make a woman mad, that’s the end of it.”

Chuckling.  (Gently.)

2.   Seen on elevator news screen (more or less):  “Test shows that the part of the brain that signifies anger is far less active when the person angered is lying down.”  [The actual test, I discovered later, had to do with the brain’s response to insult and was conducted at Texas A& M University by a team led by Eddie Harmon-Jones.]

Analysis

The first point is one I’ve trying to impress on my husband for some time.  Luckily, my very sweet husband, like the men underground (who really did smile, laugh, and ruefully shake their heads), usually  seems to get it.  That is—and I don’t mean to sound sexist here—that anger is sometimes to be expected (and accepted) in a wife.

(Just a note, the scorn the men seemed to be talking about was not the bitterness of unrequited love, so much as the irritation of unappreciated labor.)

Women do an awfully lot these days, what with many serving both as a significant, if not primary, wage earner, as well as chief cook and bottlewasher.  A little frustration now and again should be seen as par for the course.

Which brings me to point 2.

“I’m not going to take that lying down,” appears, in the light of this study, to be an exceedingly poor method of resolving arguments.  Especially for married couples.

Maybe, given applicable brain patterns, arguments between partners should be scheduled for bed, or at least, by mutual agreement, immediately moved to a prone position.

I’m not really sure I needed a cognitive scientist to tell me that this strategy would likely lead to prompter conflict resolution.  Still, it’s always nice to know more of what makes the brain (ahem) light up.

Check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at link above or on Amazon.

Categories: marriage, Stress
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Cow-ardice

August 29, 2009

Can’t help it. I’m afraid of them.

Not one on it’s own perhaps.

But in the U.S. there is hardly ever just one cow out on its own.

There’s usually a crowd.

Okay, I’m even fine with a crowd, if it’s behind a fence. But I’m not so happy if it’s me with a crowd not behind a fence (that is, on the same side.)

Yes, I know all about the archetype of the gentle cow. The patient, dull, cud-chewing cow. The sweet-breathed cow. (Though this last has always been a bit hard to swallow.)

I’m even familiar with “la vache qui rit,” the laughing cow, red and smiley, staring knowingly from a wedge of processed cheese.

But when I’m in a field with a bunch of them what comes immediately to mind is the less classic archetype of the “BIG cow.”

And, “is any of them a bull?”

And, “why are they staring at me?” (Their eyes like another set of their huge black nostrils only disconcertingly, gleemingly, intent.)

I can’t help but feel that if several ran at me at once, at least some of them would be a whole lot faster than they look.

I imagine the run of cows to take the form of an avalanche. One starts a determined scamper, sort of like the first pebble or snow ball, and then suddenly, they’ve all taken off.

After me.

I squint now. Is that huge one in front a bull or not?

(I should point out that the cows in the fields near me are beef cattle rather than dairy. This somehow makes them feel inherently more aggressive, i.e. even the nursing mothers aren’t swayed by udders.)

I run into the cows this morning (up in upstate New York) as I cross over from a deeply forested stream bed to the next field where I hope to ascend to some open air.

The stream bed is beautiful, but, with all this rain, it is more peaty, musky, rotten-loggy and slippery than ever. Teeny fluorescent orange and yellow mushrooms sprout from the dark forest floor like wild flowers; interspersed are paler, bigger, knobbier ones.

I felt extremely enterprising before leaving for the walk. As a result, I carry a small thermos of tea in one rain coat pocket, a small cup in the other.

If one of my daughters were with me, we would probably be “herping” (engaging in herpetology), which means turning over damp rocks to search for salamanders. (There are tons, it turns out.)

On my own, I am merely searching for a nice open, not too damp, spot, for a nice spot of tea. A cuppa with a view. I even have my notebook in tow. (Stuffed into the waistband of my trousers.)

But, as I climb up to the field, there they are. Too many too count, especially since I instantly shrink back from their sight. Huge. Brown. Knobby kneed. All seemingly staring at me. Especially that imposing one in the front, whose underside is not completely clear to me.

Needless to say, I back down the dark bank to the stream bed.

And am now sitting on a regular bed, in a comfortable, if slightly musty house (it really has rained all summer), thermos open to my side.

The only hint of cow, the milk in my still-steaming tea.

If you prefer elephants to cows, check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson), link above or on amazon.

Categories: cows, Stress
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Subway Blog – Autopilot

August 27, 2009

Late late late.  In this case for someone who has come to a meeting at my office forty minutes early and called me at home wondering where I am.  Not entirely my fault.  Still bad feelings coat stomach.  Pace platform.

Where I find that the expensive purse which I bought in a trance last night in a shop in Grand Central really is too big, too heavy, to be truly comfortable.    Yes, the price was slashed by 70%.  (The store has been closing for weeks, and was down to the wire.)  Even reduced, it is the most expensive purse I’ve ever bought, and I’m not even someone who cares about nice leather.  I’m vegetarian for God’s sake!

When finally on train, I sit across from a pale, but slightly red-faced, man who wears round tortoise shell glasses, a pin-stripe shirt, a careful, if curly comb-over, and thick suede hiking boots.  He  seems to be talking occasionally, gesticulating, not wildly, but in the mild considered way of someone wearing a headset, only we are on a moving train and his ears are clear.

I can’t stop myself from meeting his eyes repeatedly, though they have a slightly fishy blankness (mixed with intensity) which tells me I shouldn’t.

Late late late.  Why did I wash hair that was washed last night?   And then I had to rinse it repeatedly because I was hurrying so much I first started drying strands still sticky with shampoo.

Ate swiss muesli too (something which should never be eaten fast) with guzzling speed.

I regret that speedy muesli now as the train chugs along and I catch the eye again of the round-glassed, slightly muttering man who suddenly looks genuinely sad.  His expression makes me feel somehow sick again, beyond the lateness sickness and the muesli sickness;  I wonder what has happened to him.

Or maybe, I think suddenly, in my wishful vegetarian blogger way, he’s just reciting poetry to himself.  What with the round tortoise shell glasses.  He has an umbrella too, on his lap, one with a wooden handle which means it was probably not bought on the street in a storm.  It could be the umbrella of someone who recites poetry to themselves.

But his mutters do not have the consistency of line for poems.  And, in addition, to the flickers of sadness, there is a strong cast of resentment around his mouth.  The only poet I can think of at that moment who is resentful is Bob Dylan, and the guy across from me is definitely not singing.    Though he does flick his fingers repeatedly.  Still, no.

Oh-oh.  I think he just said “swine”.  Twice.

I try to look away.

But the autopilot mania of my lateness, my prospective workday, my morning fatigue, and the rushed muesli, makes it really hard.

I force my eyes to the hand resting on the round purple tummy of the girl right next to me, pregnant, ruffly-bloused, whose long-lashed eyes are closed.  I strive for a bit of her calm.

But striving and calm don’t mix all that well, and the guy across from me says something a bit louder now, over the sound of the train tracks.  I look up;  this time he stares right at me.

Oh the New York City subway system.

Now we stop.  Train traffic ahead.

Right next to my guy sits a blonde woman writing hurriedly on a pad with lots of pastel pages.  She seems happy, animated;  her ears do wear earphones, she sometimes twitches with rhythm, energy.  I wonder immediately if she’s writing a blog and imagine it to be a funny one. .

Then my guy, the one I’m trying not to look at it, suddenly punches the air, each elbow at a sharp right angle, as he hits the space before him.

No one else seems to notice.  And I force myself to look away.  Punching’s a bit much.  Stare instead at the black-bordered screen of the guy beside me.  He watches it intently, his thumbs on dials.  It looks like there is a animated woman in a noose on the screen.

When I get off, I walk fast.

(The above post is part of a continuing series about stress.  See e.g. “From Rat Race to Rat Rut” and any post mentioning Robert Pattinson.)

If you want something unstressful to read to kids on subway, check out 1 Mississippi, (Karin Gustafson) at link above, or on Amazon.

Categories: Blogging, Stress, Uncategorized
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Verizon – Grrr….

August 27, 2009

I hate Verizon.  Really hate Verizon.

For one thing, I don’t like the idea of a little crowd of nerdy-looking polo-shirted people trailing after me.

For another, they don’t have the iPhone.

Most importantly, I simply hate the name:  Verizon.  Even before I had the service, I hated it.  The only time I liked it was years and years ago when it was something sensible like Bell Atlantic, the name of a real person and a real place.

Verizon is a hybrid nothing word that sounds to me like a synthetic material used for making countertops.  Something that looks like plastic but at least is not supposed to stain.

I suppose it’s meant to raise the specters of Horizon and Truth.  Truth on the Horizon with Verizon.   (I’m not quite sure what that has to do with phone calls.)

But to me, it raises the specter of plastic.  Plastic that probably does stain.

Speaking of plastic, it has become nearly impossible to pay Verizon with same.

I used to do this quite frequently.   (I’d just as soon pay by check but I’m always out of stamps.)  But I tried last night, and it turns out that paying for your phone by phone now requires a password;  even just holding on the phone requires a password.  Online payments require it, of course, and online chat agents need one as well.   If you try to trick the chat agents by telling them you don’t have a password, they will insist, chattily, that you do.

Strangely, every person I talked to, or chatted with, had a three syllable name ending in “cha”.   (At first, I wondered if I was talking and “chatting” to the same person again and again, but each was different.)    Each was also extremely polite but clearly under strict orders not to speak with persons like me, suffering from password memory lapse.  I finally got frustrated enough to write out for the chat agent a list of the passwords I frequently use, some of which I have disclosed to no one else in the world.  (I don’t know what got into me.  Maybe it was the notion of Truth on the Horizon.)

I kept insisting that all I wanted to do was pay my bill.   But “money” it turns out is not a universal password.  Finally, on my third call, the agent took down my credit card number, all the while telling me all the wonderful passwordy things I could do if I just made my way to a Verizon store.

Note to self:  buy stamps.

Check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon at link above.   (Warning, you may need a password to buy, but not to read.)

Categories: Stress
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Hypocrisy/Stress – A Sticky Wicket

August 24, 2009

Lately, I chew gum on my subway home.  I believe/hope this is mainly a sign of stress.  (See e.g. post “From Rat Race to Rat Rut” about the increased formation of repetitive habits under pressure.)

It is also probably a sign of hunger.  Prices and choices in midtown Manhattan lead to frequently skipped lunches.  Even custom-made salads begin to taste like vinaigretted plastic (plus chickpeas) with enough repetition.   (Although, frankly, this dullness in the lunch area may be another sign of stress, i.e. the shrinking of that part of my brain devoted to executive decision-making,  or, in other words, my work-induced inability to risk blue cheese.)

On the one hand, the chewing is horrible:  it looks completely dumb and makes my jaw ache.  And the taste (like the wonder of many new-found delights) soon dissipates no matter how much I stuff in.

On the other hand, it also feels kind of good.  As I chew (rapidly and with some determination), my wait on the humid, griddle-like platform seems somehow more under control.   My chewing may not make the train come faster, but at least it makes me feel more purposeful.  Or at least it makes my mouth feel purposeful.    Purposeful and silent.    (A benefit, perhaps, if you consider gum chewing preferable to babbling.)

The problem is that, while I have an instinctual distrust of babbling, I was actually trained to hate gum chewing.  This training, however, seems to allow me to chew with great heartiness.   Because, given the voices in my head, I simply can’t see myself as a gum chewer.   No matter how many sticks  (that is, squares)  I jam in.   (At least three or four at once)

I also know I’d never chew gum because of my paranoia of whatever makes it sweet.  I’ve spent a lifetime trying to keep (i) sugar away from teeth and (ii) fake sugar away from my internal organs.

(Chomp chomp.)

I’m so confident in my non-gum chewing, in fact,  that lately I buy a new pack almost every other day.

Even though it’s the kind of thing I never touch.

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From Rat Race to Rat Rut

August 18, 2009

In the Science Times section of today’s New York Times (August 18, 2009), is a great article about the effects of stress on brain circuitry.  (“Brain is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop” by Natalie Angier.)

Ms. Angier reports a study by Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute in Portugal which described how chronically stressed rats succumbed to habitual and seemingly compulsive routines (like repeatedly pressing a bar for food pellets that they had no intention of eating).  The study found that underlying changes had actually taken place in the brains of these rats, with decision-making and goal-oriented areas of the brain shrinking, and areas related to habit-formation swelling.

As Ms. Angier writes, the stressed rodents “were now cognitively predisposed to keep doing the same things over and over, to run laps in the same dead-ended rat race, rather than seek a pipeline to greener sewers.”

In other words, the stressed rats got into a rut, dug, in part, by their own brains.

There’s no clear answer to why the stressed brain is so prone to habit formation.  One possibility posited in the article is that the brain in crisis may try to shunt activities to automatic pilot simply to free up space for  bigger questions.  Which, because of the concomitant weakening of the ability to make decisions, the stressed brain just can’t deal with.

Ah.

This syndrome sounds familiar.   Especially the compulsively pressing the lever part.  (Although it’s a bit hard to imagine any kind of food pellet I wouldn’t eat when under stress.)

Still, after reading the article, I came up with the following list.

Ten Signs That You May Be A Rat in a Rut.   (Or How To Know If Your Brain’s In Stress.)

1.   When you are not sitting at a computer, you check your blackberry every few minutes, even on an underground subway train.

2.   You check your blackberry when stepping out of the subway just to see how long it takes to get service back.  You study the little flashing arrows as you climb the subway stairs, conscious of your breath.

3.   If, after a while, no one’s written, you start to open spam.  Just to clear it out.  Just in case there’s something that’s not spam.  You even open some of the messages for p*n*s enl*rg*m*nt.   (Yes, you’re a woman, but you’re only checking those to see how they managed to get through your spam filter.)

4.   When someone on the phone talks of an article they’ve read, you find it online before they finish their sentence.   (At least you think they haven’t finished their sentence.  You were doing a Google search so you’re not really sure.)

5.   You convince yourself that your interest in Robert Pattinson is a sociological study of our media/youth culture.  (Oh that RPatz!  Oh those Paparazzi!)  You are alternatively amazed at how little and how much is on Google News in the articles posted on Pattinson during the “Last Hour.”

6.   You peruse the sales of online retailers even though you have no money, and (thankfully) no pressing needs.  When you buy something, you congratulate yourself on how much you saved.

7.   You check all the stocks that have gone up dramatically in the last few months but that you did not buy.  (You studiously avoid checking stocks you own, hoping that you can not check those long enough to forget what they were.)

8.   You find yourself reading the same books again and again.  These books are fantasies in which unreal things happen to unreal people, ending happily.  You don’t find the books especially satisfying after the tenth read, but, on the other hand, they are also not disturbing.

9.   Your eyes are sore at night.  When you wake up the next morning, they are still sore.  Even so, you reach for your laptop and/or blackberry first thing.  You decide that a glare screen is the only solution, and shop for one online, looking for sales.

10. Your daughter shouts from the other room at about 9:45 p.m, “are we going to have dinner soon?”   You are working on a computer that has no glare screen.  “Just a minute,” you tell her some time later.

(Wait, what did they say about food pellets?)

If you are more interested in elephants swimming than rats racing, check out 1 Mississippi at the link above or on Amazon.

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