“Only the dead are free of stress” – Hans Selye

Dr. Buskist proceeds on to lecture about the goods and bads about stress and how each is directly correlated to how we perceive a given situation and our ability to cope [adjust] with it. This as well as the quote by Hans Selye got me thinking back to some words of wisdom given from my dad about one of his good friends probably over a year ago which was:

 “A hard working man will always find a way to keep himself busy; because when he’s not busy, he’s comfortable, which is in a way discomforting.”

After looking back over the past year or so, I can see how much I’ve gradually begun to live more by that. I’ve always needed something to do so I can feel like I’m getting something done and not just wasting time, something I’ve been trying to convince myself lately isn’t a bad thing every so often. If anyone of my friends is reading this and has ever noticed, whenever someone asks something of me, rarely have I ever said that I can’t do it because of something. I’ll usually first ask what it is that they need in order evaluate the difficulty of the request and then maybe ask of what importance it is to them to get an idea of how much time I have. This is the same with work. If it’s something that I can’t immediately provide a solution to, I’ll say that I’ll look into it and follow up with them later. It’s the challenge of rising to the occasion and being able to cope that seems to grab my attention. Now there are those times where I’ll take on too many tasks and end up being a bit overwhelmed, but I’m learning to minimize that. Now that I mention “learning”, it’s the process of learning new things that interests me as well. I’ve always been known as the curious one and personally feel that at least one new thing should be learned every day, not mattering of its significance value. If you’re learning, you’re progressing.

One thing though that I’m still working on while putting myself in these stress situations is how I’m able to vent and cope in more effective, healthy ways. One way is this, writing out my thoughts so that they don’t stay inside and never see the light of day. I should probably work on verbally venting as well, wouldn’t hurt. Another method that I’ve been trying to get back to is physical exercise/activity. Since most of my work requires sitting on my butt and staring at the screen or being buried in engineering textbooks for most of the day, getting up and moving around doesn’t happen much. Going jogging/running has never been something I enjoyed enough to do on a daily basis for more than a month or so. Going hiking, rock climbing, or boxing on the other hand has always been an interest of mine to take up. So maybe I’ll get into one of those sometime soon.

So that’s my thoughts for the time being. It feels good put a significant amount of “stuff” out there even though I likely veered off the topic I started with. Oh well, now back to work.

Want one yourself? Here’s the link to where I got it off of ThinkGeek.com. Click me

So lately about once or twice a week, I’ve been mentoring a team for the upcoming B.E.S.T. local hub competition this Saturday. It’s been a pleasure of giving back to a program that did so much for me back in high school as far as getting involved and hands-on in various engineering problem-solving situations. It almost in a sense keeps me grounded and reminded of why I’m enduring countless late nights of deriving differential equations of motion, analyzing deflections and stresses of structural beams, and determining how much torque is needed to lift an X amount load using a power screw. In a way it’s simply fun to be able to take an idea that may at the time seem totally insane, delve into it and work out the details, and then at the end of it all seeing it all somehow work. It’s a satisfaction that never seems to grow old. It also doesn’t hurt to see a little of myself in someone at a younger age. It lets me know that I still have a little bit of youth left inside :-)