Tiger Woods’ friends are afraid for him. After sticking his nine iron in anything with a hole and a heartbeat ("Fore! Teen!") he’s close to a nervous breakdown, and closer to a divorce. Of course he should take an "indefinite leave" from his job.
I’m not equating moving to humping your way out of millions of dollars, a marriage, and a career, but I am insinuating that losing my mom and living in a creepy, empty house with a temperamental boyfriend and very nervous lapdog during the holidays can be considered living under a significant amount of stress. But I’m not taking an indefinite leave from writing anytime soon. At least not until the buxom barmaids start crawling out of the woodwork to air my dirty laundry.
It’s safe to assume that if you work, you will one day be employed while suffering through a period of seemingly unbearable stress. This can be caused by a break-up, family illness, eviction, spiteful roommate, or any number of other unsavory experiences. Prior to working as a copywriter, I remember my never-ending hangover getting in the way of certain desk jobs. Another time, I impulsively moved the same weekend I resigned from my job, though the events could have easily reversed their order. I dealt with the fallout of a friendship, discovered that a paramour of mine had a live-in girlfriend of several years, and dated a mentally unstable barista who worked down the block, all while managing to keep my head above water, and above the photocopies, when I was a receptionist. Work often sucks. Working when you’re dealing with more important shit sucks more.
The closing date on the house has been pushed to the first week of January, courtesy of attorneys’ vacations. Currently we are huddled over our laptops in a very cold, very empty house. We have a television on a plastic container, a couch that is stained with I’m not sure what exactly, a mattress on the floor, and a functioning fireplace. We have a lot of fires, which would be cheerful and a nice, seasonal touch, if we weren’t using them as our sole source of warmth. After the first week it got a bit Chekhovian.
In Portland, we each worked under less-than-ideal conditions at certain points. Simon had an older man as a landlord who had a crush on him. The sixty-four year old chap hovered in his doorway for hours trying to start conversation while half-heartedly attempting to restrain his overly-barky, inbred, Lassie-doppelgänger of a dog. Simon would huddle over his laptop trying to block out the sound, only to be driven out of the house. In coffee shops, where the majority of caffeinated kids knew him as a DJ, he would spend his hours between the keystrokes trying to politely dodge conversation. In the meantime, if I wasn’t at home I was "accidentally" spilling tea near anybody who laughed loud enough for me to hear over my earphones. When I was at home I was trying to avoid my roommates in their various stages of intoxication. There’s a reason why companies rent office space.
Working under stress is bad for your health, and not just because it can drive you to inhale cartons of Parliament Lights or swill a bathtub’s worth of gin. Sleep distress, tense muscles, headaches, diarrhea or nausea, and extreme fatigue often set in, not to mention the panic attacks, poor diet, and deportment of a dung beetle. Even worse, studies show that incessant stress can lead to high blood-pressure, cardiac problems, addiction, and ulcers. You can go bald. You can stop menstruating. Each of us has done one of the two.
When undergoing stress, other than suddenly having my ovaries post a Fail Whale, I feel like I’ve eaten a pair of knitting needles, and I chronically clench some muscle in my lower jaw that causes the back of my neck and shoulder blades to knot up like a pair of stockings in a clothes dryer. I’m also prone to chronic nightmares when dealing with a heavy load, which works against another tried-and-true piece of stress management advice: get enough sleep. I take a shit-ton of fifteen minute cat naps in order to cope, which I look at as my little equivalent of a corporate food court or holiday bonus.
There are ways to avoid stress that seem obvious, but you don’t have to become a yoga-mat toting hippie in order to prevent blowing your gasket. Take breaks regularly, and not just to drain the dragon. Synaptic pathways in your brain need time to recharge themselves, ’cause if they keep doing their thing, much like Lindsay Lohan hitting the club circuit, they burn out in spectacular fashion. So take breaks when your nose is making out with the grindstone, and take them often. It’ll make you a better worker. Science says so.
Eliminate distractions that you can control. Turn off the television blaring breaking news, and turn off your iPod if it’s your turn during a game of Words With Friends. (My username is AinsleyOfAttack, for those of you looking to decimate me in Scrabble.) For distractions you can’t control, be creative. If you’re a new parent, see if another freelancing new mom or dad would be willing to alternate two hours of babysitting duty. If your roommate is having ridiculously loud sex in the apartment when you’re looking to get things done, leave a polite, if not outright passive-aggressive, note under his or her door, and then go to the nearest library or other quiet, WiFi-saturated area. Or just suggest a threesome and expedite the whole process. Blame it on the need to heal your synaptic pathways.
I’ve found that having a plan B helps, too. If you were hoping to hole up in a local diner and finish working on that web video script, but a bevy of screeching harpies dressed in the skin of teenage girls comes in once you’ve logged on, know where there are other spots nearby to hook up and tune out. Have a list of places on hand for moments like that and you’ll save yourself the stress of searching while on deadline.
Speaking of lists, write them. It can help you to stay organized, which is often the first thing to go when you’re under duress. Look for the humor in the situation, may it be your dog sleeping in a pile of your boyfriend’s laundry, or the crickets on the floor of the bathroom. (Okay, maybe they’re not funny at all.) Remember that you are not what you do for a living.
Perhaps the best advice I can give is the weltanschauung I follow most stringently. At risk of sounding out of touch with the modern musical world, I follow Ian MacKaye’s lead, sorta. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, but the fucking…well, everybody’s gotta have a vice. Being sober and a non-smoker keeps my body from feeling shittier than it already does when I’m at the end of my rope. Eating well and trying to get a full eight hours of sleep help, too, but I can honestly say that I have no idea how I managed to work when I was actively drinking. I must have been an excruciatingly annoying co-worker. But fun at parties!
All of this said, the holidays can make work awesome if you’re in an office. There are often cookies in the break-room, holiday parties, and a vacation with a Christmas bonus looming in the days ahead. For the freelancer, this time of year can make it slightly more stressful to apply pressure to clients and to hunt for work. But whether it’s the "most wonderful time of the year" or just an average week in March when you’ve scheduled the visit from your in-laws, there are always going to be times when work is going to march lock-step with some other seemingly insurmountable obstacle that life has thrown in your path. Keep your head up, keep your stress level down, and recognize that this — like the absolutely grating Gap commercials with dancing models — too shall pass.
