It's Called "Super Stress"

I’ve been playing a lot of time management games lately. Hot Dog Bush, Zombie Burger, Wedding Dash, Farm Frenzy, Cake Mania (1, 2, and 3), Pizza Pronto, The Great Chocolate Chase… Anyway, these games all have these two things in common: you have to remember a particular sequence of how things are put together or ordered and the game gets faster and faster as you go. I play these things like a disease.

So T says to me, “Why do you play those? That’s everything you hate.” And it is. You know I’ve told you what a terrible waitress I was, and about my nightmares about not getting orders taken fast enough, not getting people seated, not turning my orders in to the kitchen, having the orders pile up waiting to be taken to tables, and getting locked in the walk-in cooler. Let me emphasize that none of these things ever happened to me during the short time I was an actual waitress, at age 14. I just always worried that they would.

But that’s the inevitable outcome of all of these games… You will get overwhelmed and fail. And I have no excuse for liking them. Maybe it’s self-abuse? Maybe deep down, I feel like I’m too full of myself and I have to knock myself down a peg? Or—and this is the most likely--I’m just a stress junkie. Maybe I like that feeling of constantly being right on the edge?

T says he has heard about something called “superstress.” All the info my friend Google found about superstress was basically advertising a self-help book. But I did find one article that had a little “stress test,” which I took. Basically if your total score for the 20 questions (each worth up to 3 points) is 12 or more, you have superstress.

I scored 43.

Then, of course, you can categorize your superstress so that you know what kind of superstress you have. I already know. You probably do, too. But I checked anyway. My superstress type is Explosive, Can’t Slow Down (perfectionist, no tolerance for mistakes—especially my own—keeps everything going ultrafast, tries to do too much, lives on caffeine).

Surprise!

Actually, lately I feel like I am less stressed than ever. I feel pretty zen, actually. And I feel like I am getting more done. Curiously, the article mentions that feeling as a symptom of superstress. And the treatment they suggest… get this… begins with cutting down on the caffeine. Ha!

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

But I have to feel like I am doing something, right? So my good friend Google and I searched until we found this article. Knitting relieves stress. So there. Now I feel better.