Sunday, April 10

Stress Factor 8

I got a buzzcut with a mohawk last week. The majority of my hair is only 1/8", with a narrow strip just on the top of my head that's about 1.5". It's the lest amount of hair I've ever had since I was born.

On the Tuesday after I got it cut, I was sitting in my Fabric Design class, using class time to surf the internet because the network was down at my apartment, when I heard the professor talking to another of the students about haircuts. The other woman was talking about how her daughter had just had a haircut - went from "No, I never want to cut my hair ever!" to "Can we cut it off?" And I heard my professor say, "You know, getting a haircut all of a sudden can be a sign of stress."

And I turned to them and said, "I am very stressed right now."

But as soon as I said that, I realized that, even though I should be absolutely stressed out of my mind, had been all of the week before, I wasn't at that moment.

Oh, I was still behind in my major's classes, was barely getting by in my academics, was miraculously doing fine in my drawing class, but I didn't feel all of that pressure anymore.

All this past week, even knowing how much work I have to do to pass my classes, worrying about finances and being able to eat, finding time to actually talk to my friends, I have been remarkably relaxed. I've nearly finished a book, made a lot of progress on my latest self-imposed ebook project, got my housing for next year mostly squared away.

Then again, sitting here and describing all of it has made me considerably more stressed than I was this morning, lounging in bed, pretending I had nothing to do for the rest of my life except lay around in bed.

Oh well.