Stress Busting

Oh what a day - or is it what a week! It's not that I know how to do relaxation, but actually carrying out the various actions to relax - ....breathing regularly and deeply for example it's just hard to actually do it when under a lot of pressure.

Sometimes I wonder if we actaully have control of our lives now - or whether our lives just control us. Of course, if I was a hugely organised person I would just ignore the emails that pop up every other minute while I am trying to get another piece of work done, or learn to say the word "no" a bit more often. Then at home - where does one find solace and quiet - certainly not even in the toilet in our house. "MUMMY, WH-ER-E A-R-E Y-O-U?" shouts Iona smashing through the broken lock on the door and exposing me reposing on the throne to the rest of the family in the bedroom.

But today was one of those evenmorestressfulthanususal days (hope the spell checker isn't on). I've put a restful picture at the top of the page just to help me begin to relax before I go to bed - to be honest this is a new computer and there are no pictures saved on it to this is one of the only ones I could find.

First there was the launch of CCWA NI which for the sake of Margaret Ritchie's important diary as at 9am. I'm not used to comuting to Belfast in the rush hour - 45 minutes. Thank goodness I live and work in Newtownards. But at least we got to sit and listen to speeches for a good 45 minutes - not the most relaxing way to spend your morning - but beggars can't be choosers. Then it was off to the Community Relations Council Live Issues conference at which I was speaking - couldn't get parked - but a lovely man guided me into a spare space only about 2 miles from the Ramada!! Then I managed to go into the wrong conference and realised my mistake which Sam's P1 teacher asked me what I was doing there. Mmm ... it was some education resource conference.

Anyway all was well eventually and I even managed to bend Duncan Morrow's ear about the (non stressful) fact that the salary for my post runs out today - not to mention the core costs for the Community Relations Programme. He's the second Chief Executive to say "I don't know how this has happened" in relation to The Link funding in the space of two weeks.

I decided to write a "to do" list while supposedly listening to another contributor's input (God forgive me!) and it had a slightly calming effect except that there were 15 things on it that need to be done in the next two days. Then headed home so at least I got a chance to see my lovely children at some point today.

Mowing the lawn could be termed stress busting, I suppose until you see the height of our grass and the small size of our hover mower. It would probably need to hover about a foot above the grass as this was the first cut. Still I got about half of the back lawn cut and filled the brown bin.

The Community Forum meeting tonight was in the main quite encouraging, but I still find myself grinding my teeth and clenching things that probably shouldn't ever be clenched when dealing with issues in the Forum. I was taken aside by a member of the Loyalist community afterwards (always a nervous moment) and in muted tones asked about the possible sources for the funding of a table tennis table. Sighs of relief all round. So here I am at home blogging in a valient attempt to de-stress and only feeling more stressful becuase I haven't sorted out the washing and made the lunches in preparation for tomorrow.

Oh well .... time to book my Mother's Day massage I think......