Anyone who has known me long (let’s face it everyone who reads my blogs is either related to me and so you’ve known me since birth or if not you’ve known me since I became an adult!) you will know that I am somewhat of a busy minded person.  That is to say, I don’t switch off unless I’m sleeping, I over think, I obsess, I go over details to the nth degree, I’m a bit of a stress head.  There are quite a few good things that come from this..I don’t miss much, I get things done, I’m likely to say yes if you want me to do something, I’m awesome at organising things.  The downside is that I can be pretty tense at times, if my emotions are involved they can be all consuming for anyone within a mile radius of me and lately…I think it effects my health.

One of the reasons I don’t blog so much anymore is that I literally haven’t got the time to spare.  I’ve been gradually picking up freelance work since the end of last year and I now have essentially three clients that I am juggling with two toddlers, busy social life, being a member of a full and ambitious church, keeping in touch with friends and family back home and trying to spend meaningful time with my husband.  There is literally no time for just stopping to think anymore, no reflection, no planning, no space in my brain.

As I write I know that there are plenty of women who do the same and more and they don’t have palpatations and a dicky tummy, but before I disregard my experience as not qualifying as hard and just carrying on anyways, I’m going to say I’m TOO stressed.

I have a plaster on my arm from blood taken today.  My lovely GP (who is a doctor and has four children under the age of five, the twins she is still breast feeding, so there’s someone who has it busier than me?!) listened to me give a history of six months of random symptoms, from something like IBS, to endless colds, to shaking legs, to flutterings in my chest that make me cough, followed by my many Google generated theories on what they might mean from diabetes, panic attacks, cancer of anything and Chrohns disease, all while blubbing my eyes out.  She generously signed me up for blood tests for just about all there is on the list and has referred me to a highly intelligent, good bed side manner, thoroughly nice consultant of gastro things to see if he can work out what’s the problem. 

I pray it’s nothing sinister.  I pray the consultant will stamp out all my worries and give me a happy diagnosis of ‘it’s just all stress’.  That is my hope.

But then what do I do with that?  How does one remove stress?  Particulalry one who is “wired” that way?  How do I slow down when in one hour I can take four work calls, send two emails, clean two small bums, cook a dinner and process one wash of laundry, all the while planning my child’s birthday party and make a mental list of the things I need to tell my equally hard working husband when he comes in the door?

It’s a rhetorical question.  I don’t want answers because if you gave me a solution from your point of view it would stress me out to have to try and apply it to my life.  I’ll work it out.

As I finish off this I realise I was supposed to have baked 20 gingerbread men for Jackson’s birthday party on Sunday so Minnie and I can decorate them tomorrow lunch time, but instead I took 20 minutes to write this…and don’t get me started on the fact that as I type I can hear my children watching Brave and I’m thinking “is it too scary for them?”, “I haven’t seen them all day, I should be with them”, oops and I’ve over cooked their dinner…

I’ll let you know how I get on…