wispfox

Sometimes, the methods I use to determine my mental state are so odd...

I know I'm stressed when:

I stop listening to music. Not too bad is if I'm not listening to music at work, because it might just mean I need to concentrate. Far, far disturbing is if I don't listen to music in my car when it isn't really late at night (late at night might mean exhaustion such that distractions are bad). (ie, I'd not been listening to music in my car for at least a week or so, and have since returned to doing so. And, today, I'm listening to music at work while working on stuff.) This doesn't even tend to happen in wintertime, at least as far as car-related music.

I stop being willing to talk to people. At all. About pretty much anything. If it's effortful for me to talk to my co-workers about work-related things, there's a problem. Because I put my social energy toward work, first and foremost, since it needs it the most (often and amount). (I'm starting to be interested in the idea of being social with people I don't already know well, again. This is good! And good timing, considering I'm going to Seattle in a week!) Not being highly new people social also happens in winter, but tends to allow for a reasonable (low level) amount of work-related conversation. Probably, if I did not work in the wintertime, I'd be able to be otherwise more social; I don't really know.

The only thing I can think about is hiding from everyone and everything, and sleeping. And, generally, it also means I'm sleeping fairly poorly. This is also a wintertime effect, and doesn't really seem that different when comparing wintertime and stress-related reactions.


Probably other things, but these are the most noticeable changes in terms of starting to revert back to normal, now.

I'm _so_ glad work calmed down enough for me to start to recover!