I have approximately one week until the closing on the sale of my mother’s house. For some reason, probably because the date kept being pushed back due to attorneys going on vacation, I developed a sort of lackadaisical mentality, as though the day would never come. Although I am naturally a neurotic, type-A personality, who does random shit like clean the area behind the base of the toilet and alphabetize her spice rack, I quickly adapted to our Trainspotting-esque living conditions. I can tell you with anal-retentive certainty that there is an empty box of Nerds (Simon’s,) three library books, and the wrapping paper from five Christmas gifts on the floor. I can also tell you with equal steadfastness that I will not be picking any of these items up off of the floor today, because I have adapted the mentality of, "We’ll do it before the closing."

Only now it’s before the closing. So I have to get up off of my ass and do something before a green baby starts crawling on my ceiling.

My broker was a good friend of my mother’s, so she calls to check up on me more often than most brokers do. Or perhaps I’m just flattering myself, after all, she’s aching for the closing just as much as I am since she can’t pick up her 4% commission until the papers are signed and the lawyers have given awkward man hugs or chest bumps or whatever it is that they do after they’ve done some maths and netted top dollar. Last night she called and proceeded to go through the list of things I need to do before vacating the premises. I scrawled notes as she yammered on. By the second page I started to feel as though I needed a Pepto shot with an Immodium chaser. Apparently my dog-whistle pitched "uh-huh"s gave away my panic.

"Now, honey," she said in a voice that let me know that she had children. "Don’t hesitate to call me if any of this makes you feel overwhelmed."

I’ve learned in sobriety that you have to ask for help, otherwise you risk really fucking yourself up. God knows that this situation strikes a nerve with me. Back when I was drinking I moved impulsively, leaving behind entire apartments filled with shit that I suddenly "didn’t need," along with social circles wondering if I’d died (an email from the director of a poetry group read, "Next time you decide to leave the state, tell someone.") When I see a cardboard box I start to get itchy. It’s as though the slow slope of the key coming off the keyring ignites some sort of reaction in me. I want to change my phone number, dye my hair, and pretend that NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENED. Only this time around, nothing happened. Well, other than my mom dying, but that isn’t anything that moving to a different city can fix.

I’m not good at things like this, to put it mildly. Moving requires organization, which is fine when you’re talking about a project, such as writing the text for a website, or tracking edits on an article, but I lose my ability to focus once serious shit is involved. My eyes start involuntarily glazing over and I suddenly feel myself under the pressure of a very demanding nap schedule. But I can’t shy away from this. The family of four — one of which is an infant daughter named Ainsley, swear to God — is expecting an empty, "broom clean" house to move into. Until then, it’s a race to see if I can successfully get this shit done without knocking myself unconscious or going out and becoming a Lindsay Lohan impressionist.

At this point in reading you may be wondering, “What is it that you need to do that’s so goddamned demanding that it has you whining like a New Jersey housewife whose flight to Miami is delayed?” Here’s a taste.

- Dismantle a king-sized, wrought-iron bed frame, then throw out said frame and accompanying mattress and box spring. I should mention that all of these items are on the second floor of a very narrow two-story house.

- Go through a decade’s-worth of dried goods in two pantries. My mother was a hoarder. When I cleaned out the over-stocked freezer I discovered that there were batches of tomato sauce and cookies labeled from years before she moved. Meaning that she moved food with her in 1999. I can tell you just from standing on a chair and peeking that there is a bottle of ketchup whose color  and logo suggest that it’s been around since U2 was an indie band, and there’s a bottle of unopened A1 whose sheer presence is terrifying since my mother didn’t cook steak or burgers and I haven’t consumed red meat in nearly seven years.

- Choreographing a stranger coming by and picking up the rest of the furniture, including my mattress, while somehow preserving my ability to sleep and comfortably exist for the remaining forty-eight hours of life in this house.

- Cutting off and canceling all of the important stuff, like gas, mail, lights, camera, action. Due to the fact that the only time I can stop twitching with nerves is when I’m planted in front of the television watching CSI or LeBron James (in both situations the nervous tics are appropriate,) I don’t want to cut cable until the very end. Unfortunately I think I have to drop off all of the cable boxes at some undisclosed location, because cable companies live in an alternate, incomparably selfish universe, much like Paris Hilton and cats. 

- Orchestrate moving nineteen boxes and a stair-wary dog up five flights into my new apartment in a five hour window following the closing. It’s a walk-up. Also, figuring out how to get furniture delivered on a Saturday when my brand-spankin’-new super isn’t in the building. Hi! I’m your new tenant, here to inconvenience you from the get-go! Don’t mind the yelling! I do this all the time.

Of course, these are all what Simon commonly refers to as "white people problems." What he really means is that they’re insignificant, "luxury problems," if you will. I agree. But I look at my panic and dread as a positive thing. Six months ago my main complaints were the way chemo was useless, my mom’s ascetis had swollen her out of a wardrobe, and I didn’t know if we would be able to pay our mortgage while simultaneously trying to sustain her healthcare coverage since she couldn’t work. Those were problems. Moving furniture? Potatoes so small they couldn’t adequately feed dust mites. The fact that I’m popping an ulcer over what sort of couch could fit in a seven-foot-long one-bedroom apartment means that my stress level has actually gone down. Life has returned to its normal pace.

I’m always going to have complaints. Not only is it in my nature, but I think it’s part of the modern human condition. Life isn’t perfect unless you make a conscious effort to see it that way, and even then, it’s usually a blend of perception, positive visualization, meditation, and medication. So even though I can’t just "om" my way through the move, I can observe the simple fact that my inconveniences are now non-life-threatening. And although I would trade my easy problems for my mom back in a heartbeat, it’s good to know that when life goes on it doesn’t make too dramatic of a flourish. Unless, of course, you count an artichoke colored couch being hauled up a staircase by a five-foot-tall alcoholic.

Happy New Year. This one’s gonna be better.

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.