Death to Stress

Current Tunes: Pantera – 25 Years

Just a little more than two weeks until DragonCon, and it’s all I can think about in my private little crazy mind. I’m ready to dive in head first, immerse myself in the biggest weekend of escapism imaginable.

That point hit me pretty hard that DragonCon is exactly that: a weekend of complete removal from concrete reality. Walking around three different hotels over the course of a weekend being surrounded by people dressed up as superheroes and “Star Wars” stormtroopers is not even remotely close to reality. Over the weekend, too, my physiological needs transform quite dramatically. I go from needing minimum three meals a day to eating maybe one sandwich for a whole day. Seven hours of sleep? Psshhhh… four hours is twice as much as I need to function!

My memory-creation brain cells go into overdrive as well. My mind switches to some kind of ultra-photographic-memory-mode where my eyes are like lenses, soaking in light second for second and retaining the images in some massive storage unit somewhere in my skull. My ability to retain and process information somehow increases as well, between all the fascinating panels featuring stars of stage and screen, to the insightful writers panels, to the eye-catching trinkets offered by the merchants from all over the nation. Yes, it’s nothing like true reality at all. Thinking about it so intently, it reminds me of Baudrillard’s “hyper-reality.” That concept perfectly explains DragonCon: a simulation of incredible scope and influence.

The past few days, what lone thoughts I have that don’t center around DragonCon have been related to a close-knit group of topics: stress, efficiency, wellness, self-management. Like always, really. But the conclusions have been stunningly different of late. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve let myself fall into a circle of behavior that makes things far more difficult than they should be. The two major components are procrastination and stress. Stop me if this sounds familiar…

Basically I get overly stressed out about a particular task that has to be done. The stress grows so great, I put it off until later. Then, the process of procrastinating only allows for more time to stress about the obstacle, which then leads to more and more procrastinating. I’ve managed to wrest myself from this cycle, for the moment, and I did it by starting with stress. I calmed myself down, calculated a path to completion, and let it go at that. So far, it’s working.

There’s been a tangible, physical component to the cycle too that must be combated as well, and I don’t think I fully grasped its power until this morning. My far-too-high stress level I believe has been affecting my sleep, as it often does for all sorts of people. For instance, before I fell asleep I remember my last thoughts being stressing about a particular school assignment, and I believe the stress carried over into my sleep. I woke up multiple times (at least four that I recall) over the course of the night, which resulted in me not being fully rested for this morning. After only a few moments awake, I was sure that the stress was the major culprit.

In the past I would have chalked it up to an uncomfortable mattress or the temperature being too high in my room or laying down the wrong way on my pillow, something of that sort. I’ve had more than frequent difficulty sleeping over the past several months, and I think I have to credit stress as the reason why.

So, new goal: sleep comfortably and calmly, free of stressful thoughts. Which will hopefully lead to a smoother, more comfortable, more progressive day-to-day existence. Cheers to that, am I right? I love simple solutions for complicated problems.

A Rant Unworthy of a Title

Current Tunes: “Goodfellas” on AMC

Well, after the past four or five days (maybe more, I don’t pay attention) of both sides of the political spectrum bantering back and forth I decided today I had enough and needed to clear something up.

Let’s talk about Nazis.

I am sick and dog-tired of people on either side of the political aisle yelling and screaming and pointing fingers at their opponents while they scream the other ‘n’ word at the top of their lungs in angry accusation. This nonsense has got to stop. To be fair, it's not everyone on either side, it's really the extremists yelling at other extremists, people who should be marginalized or just flat out ignored. But I was too annoyed by this to just let this go.

Since all this name-calling’s been going on, let me present you with an image-based definition of a nazi-affiliated individual: This is a Nazi. This guy is also a Nazi.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s run down a list of people who are NOT nazi and or Hitler-affiliated:

- Former President George W. Bush
- Current President Barack Obama
- Rush Limbaugh
- Barney Frank
- Karl Rove
- Bill O’Reilly
- Rahm Emmanuel

Also, for the sake of even deeper and further clarification (and to give you an especially deep perspective), not even Cobra Commander is a nazi.

There’s a whole host of reasons why this nazi-name-calling on both sides is bad for the country, but let me cover some of my favorites. It’s just flat-out immature and childish and plain ignorant for one thing. Like I said, it’s an equivalent to name-calling. And when you do that, when you resort to that level, you’re actually degrading and undermining the context of that word. The more people you attempt to label a nazi, the less meaningful it becomes. I’m not saying the meaning has to be a positive meaning; I’m saying its negative connotation decreases each time you use it so carelessly.

For another, labeling someone with such a horrendous term in such a careless fashion only aids the cause of real, legitimate racists and supremacists. For one, it helps blur then line between level-minded citizens and extremists and radicals. Even more, it’s labeling, and that’s what racists do; they want people labeled, categorized and compartmentalized.

This nonsense needs to stop. The right says the left is nazi because it supposedly wants socialism, and the left calls the right nazi for supposedly being warmongers and racists. Neither side is correct, plain and simple. The only thing that’s a nazi is a nazi, pure and simple as that.

Why am I so frustrated about this though? It’s just another chink in the long, heavy, rusted and useless chain of American partisan politics. Point the finger and call the other guy the worst thing you can think of. People will keep on doing it, so thoroughly convinced of their stance in the right, when they so completely fail to realize that ignorance far too often leads to the strongest of convictions.