A lesson in stress management

I wake up in plenty of time to catch my plane. I wash my hair in the shower. I shave a little. I skip coffee because I have no food. Food and coffee can wait until I’m in the terminal.

I’m in Phoenix.

I get in my rental Corolla, my second consecutive rental Corolla on this three-leg work trip. When I get home I’ll see the return of my own personal Corolla from its cross-country move. Only my Corolla is far less equip than these fancy newer ones with electronic everything and tight, tight brakes. God I love rental car brakes. And electronics.

I digress.

I’ve programmed a gas station near the rental car return into my phone’s GPS. My phone’s GPS has been working well lately. She seems to have smartened up a bit. She surprises me with her accuracy. She tells me to avoid the highway and take a side street all 17 miles to the airport. Really? Is the commuter traffic that bad? There’s construction on this side street, and school zones and traffic lights. But I trust her.

I left the hotel in plenty of time if nothing goes terribly wrong. I’m not at all stressed between waking up and getting in this car. And then I’m in the car. I drive 5 minutes into my 37 minute journey but the GPS predicts I’m still 34 minutes away.

This is when I begin to age at a faster clip.

I’m 100% positive that stress accelerates aging. Scientists have probably shown this. Those really stressful moments, like when a car almost merges into yours and you do a mini swerve to avoid it, I think cut off about 5 days of your life each time. This has not yet been scientifically proven.

I’m perpetually running a calculation in my head:  Get gas by 7:20. Pray for good signage for rental car return. Get to rental car place by 7:30. Gather my shit. Get the receipt. Get on the shuttle by 7:40. Get to a check-in kiosk (I like paper boarding passes, so sue me). Get through security. Find a breakfast burrito. Find that great coffee place I heard about. Go to the bathroom at 8:30. Board my on time plane.

All of this happens as planned, but better. I’m on the rental car shuttle by 7:31. This is when my heart rate begins to settle back down. It never should have elevated in the first place.

This guy next to me on the shuttle calls his hotel and says, “I made a huge, huge mistake. I left my wedding ring on the wet bar. Room 123. Yes, I’ll hold.” He looks at me and says with a smile, “I wish I could say it’s the first time.” He appears cool as a cucumber.

I breeze through security. In a small, unnecessary miracle, the good coffee shop is right next to my gate, C18, and so is a place for the breakfast burrito I’m too nauseous to eat. I go to the bathroom at 8:30. I board my on time plane. The flight is full, but the man I’m next to doesn’t smell bad, is not obese, and is extremely nice. I give him a short lesson on batteries because he asked for it. People in Phoenix, where he is from, have been unfailingly nice. I order a Bloody Mary with Tanqueray and pay using my free drink ticket.

The drink arrives. It came with a lime this time. I cradle it with my newly purpled nails – Phoenix with its zillion nail salons and warm winter weather swayed me to indulge. I try to let the ounce of alcohol settle my nerves the remaining 10%, hoping that hope doesn’t speak ill of me.

…

I type this to help remember this feeling. I want to train myself to understand that the stress I impart on myself is avoidable. I could either A – leave with an absurd amount of time to spare, or B – let my good planning play out and remember that the stress doesn’t help. It only ages me prematurely.

The nice young man next to me plays a brain puzzle game on his iPad. He’s on his way to Oakland to see his grandma, who turns 95 today. 95! Then I think about this picture of my cousin when she was bald, due to chemo. She’s flanked by her sisters and they are all smiling these huge smiles with their perfect white teeth. My cousin is alive thanks to very skillful doctors. One of her sisters once said she looks at the picture every morning to remember how much worse things could be.

Perspective.

Let it be that I remember this too.

DIY graphic design

Look around this blog. I designed it. Well, Blogger designed it in the web sense of course. But the colors, the font choice, the polka dot background? That's all me.

And I can't seem to find the right brown.

I'm obsessed with including brown because in graphic design it's seen as dependable, stable, strong, grounded, and somewhat sophisticated. I'm trying to play you with color, you see. I want a medium-dark wood grain, but that's not an option. So I continuously tweak the brown when I see it on a different monitor and think yuck, no.

Does anyone want to guess how many times I've changed the brown color?

Nobody? This is a boring post, I know, but the answer is numerous. 

For the first maybe year of this blog the edge background was this beautiful blue with pink, yellow, and wood-grain polka dots:

I made it in PowerPoint and I loved it. But then I looked at many many more blogs to get a feel for what professionals do. They mostly had less contrast between the edge background and the text background. The eyes like that. So I changed mine. I still have blue, and hot pink, and brown, but now it's much more tame. More professional. 

But on the way to this look, I did consider some other options, such as:

Dots did have this background for a few months.

Is anyone bored yet? I hope not. 

Let's see how different Dots could look with the current polka dot edge background. Behold:

Everyone loves blue. Here nothing else has changed. I like this, but it's missing brown.

I love all medium and dark greens. And I love this green and orange. But not here. And not with the blue-gray.

Pink and taupe, say nope.

Just no.

What you find when you tinker around with one color knob is that the other knobs need to change. This can be infuriating. Real graphic designers surely have more sophisticated tools to help get it right. So now I'm curious. What do they use? And how do they approach a blank page?

Untrained minds want to know. It will help us procrastinate.

And now that I think about it, this post just may qualify for my Feb. DIY challenge!

Pack it up again

There are things you've had since high school or even grade school that you pack up again and again with every move you make.

For me, those things are mostly from The Silver Shoppe in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and made with moonstone. It's also one of my first pairs of earrings, these tiny snakes wrapped around yin yang symbols. Speaking of earrings, I can't forget the large circular pair with etched animals that I've always admired and never once wore. A Christmas gift from a stylish elder.

I pack these things up again and again. 

This time I cleaned them first.

Progress.

FLIRI and proud

FLIRI:  Futuristic, learner, individualization, responsibility, intellection

I’m expecting a call.

Someone has tested, and scored a FLIRI!

The final person for the space ship has been found.