Stress

People have always told me I'm SO calm. Calm, calm, calm....  Peaceful, relaxed, never look like I'm nervous. That I come off as confident, at ease, that I know what I'm doing.

Even when I'm doing something that does actually make me a little nervous, like giving a speech.

For the most part, I agree, anyway. My emotions tend to be slow-moving, and my basic mood is happy, peaceful and content. I don't generally experience much fluctuation in my mood during the day. (This does mean, however, that once I do get upset, I stay that way for a long time.)

In the recent years it hasn't been so natural to feel at peace all the time anymore, though. A lot of things have increased my stress levels:

• realizing I didn't want to do any of the most obvious jobs for my degree, and that it would be difficult to find a job with it
• still trying out one of those jobs while writing my master's degree and being worn out from it
• then finishing my degree and seeing that the reality really is that it's almost impossible to find meaningful work, since I'm either not qualified, or overeducated
• overworking myself as a mail carrier, for the money and to see what it would be like to have a full time job while still trying to maintain my almost daily ballet classes, my fiction writing and other hobbies and friendships
• quitting after four months due to physical burn out (I mean I was practically exercising 8-9 hours a day! Who does that except athletes!?)

The worst is definitely behind me by now, though.

Before graduation I had always had very socially oriented jobs. Especially at my last one I was organizing events and leading groups all the time. After the day I would always find myself so mentally exhausted that I didn't have energy to do my creative work anymore, I just wanted to lie down and do nothing. I should've known sooner that I'm too introverted for that kind of jobs.

After graduation I had this idea that I would have to have both solitary, and practical, ideally physical job to balance out writing, drawing and my other creative "brain work". That way I wouldn't run out of mental energy anymore! Well, obviously it wasn't the case. Sure, I didn't run out of mental energy, so it seemed to work fine at first. But in the end, I ran out of physical energy, and the result was the same. I was too exhausted to function properly after two months. My body simply didn't have enough time to recover, when my ballet class ended at 9 PM and I'd have to get up 5 AM for more physical labor. 

In the end I wasn't able to do anything more than the most basic things to keep my daily life going.

However, during that time I noticed I really didn't need to save my "brain work" for just creative stuff. I still had a craving to study all the time. I noticed I was filling the gap that graduating had left by reading a lot more non-fiction than I'm used to, and watching a lot of religion related Youtube channels with a "scientist's" mindset. Even though I thought I had left it behind and didn't want to study religions anymore. Turns out I do! People's thought processes are just way too fascinating for me. They beg for analysis.

And after I left for a sick leave from my mail carrying job, due to exhaustion, I just suddenly had this idea that I wanted to do research and go for a PhD. All the stress that had been building up for a few years now, seemed to fly out of the window then. I was so excited. I put together a vague research plan in a few days and sent it to a professor, who thought the topic was good and I should continue with it. So, now, a few weeks later I have applied for an early-stage researcher's position. I don't expect to get it, since I came up with this plan so close to the deadline, but I have a few alternative ways to go with this, so at some point in the next year, I will definitely be able to really get this going.

I think that research could be a perfect profession for me in the long run. It could be introverted enough. I could still handle some teaching. Obviously I haven't given up on my dream of writing fiction full time. But right now I want to see were this route might take me, as well.

If it released me from years of slowly building stress in a day, it's got to be worth a shot.