Stress Becomes You

I'm preparing to teach a Bible lesson tomorrow. It's about stress. Funny, when I typed in keywords about stress - trying to find out what the top stressors were - I found more solutions for stress than identifications of stress. Finally, after maneuvering through lots of sites that claimed public speaking is more feared than death - surprising - I found the list of top stresses. Here they are:
· Death of a loved one or friend
· End of a relationship
· A move, change of schools, or change of jobs
· Money problems
· Loss of position, standing, or ranking
· Physical, sexual, or verbal abuse
· Overwhelming pressure from coaches, peers, employers, or family
· An accident or injury

I'll probably add public speaking during my lesson tomorrow. I can even quote a Seinfeld episode that says that during a funeral, most would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.

This got me thinking about romance writers, and our greatest stressors, sooooo
· Loss of an editor (probably she's pregnant)
· End of a series that we really loved writing (Will Rawlings really end the Harry Potter book! Say It Isn't So!)
· A move to a different house, change of genres, or change of word count (What do you mean my suspense needs to be 50,000 words in stead of 75,000!)
· Money problems (Just what is basket accounting anyway?)
· Loss of position, standing, or ranking (Please, Walmart, put my book on your shelf!)
· Reviewer abuse (Mrs. Giggles Wants You!)
· Overwhelming pressure from readers, peers, editors, or family (You want it when! and You want me to remove how many secondary characters?)
· An accident or injury to the computer or disk the complete manuscript was on (Anyone besides me ever rewrite 5000 words from memory?)

This rant about stress started when my two-year-old woke up an hour early and decided it was most fun to rearrange the papers that were coming out of my printer. Not only did he get the pages out of order, but if he happened to the take the paper out before the printer fully released it, the printer jammed. I guess this falls under overwhelming pressure from family. Oh, and this is definitely a post with an ick factor, but later in the day, the cat threw up on my desk Easy clean up, since I just had to throw away papers.

Why does the whole house choose my office to play in!!!!

Well, all, have a great stress free day.
Oh, and write five pages.