Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Stress Threshold

When it comes to stress, I've decided I'm a sprinter, not a long distance runner. Some people thrive on stress like most of us depend on coffee; if we have it, we're productive and satisfied, if we don't, we're irritable and worthless. And while it's not a healthy state to be wired for hyper-productivity, it's got certain enviable qualities: these people accomplish more in one year than most could get done in ten with three clones, no sleep, and a robot named Rosie.

I'm more a sprinter, I guess. I can handle large volumes of stress, dozens of sleepless nights, back to back 14 hour days, and still manage to love my work and my life- but I inevitably hit a wall somewhere around the three month mark.

The break-neck pace began for me in August and shows no sign of slowing down until Christmas is over. And just
today I reached my threshold- a whole month and a half shy of the finish line. I have no choice but to continue to keep up, but sometime between midnight when I went to bed last night and 6:30 when I woke up this morning, my brain switched to auto pilot. I know from past experience that there is still one final phase of stress coming that will signify the end (one way or another): when my eye starts twitching, then it's all over...

2 comments:

Adam said...

Hang in there man. The large workload you have just means that people realize how talented you and Julie are and keep wanting to use ya. Onward...

Ryan B said...

Thanks for the encouragement, bro- I need that right now. I know God's trying to sharpen me and expand the worship ministry, so I'm joyful in hope of what He will accomplish, but it doesn't mean I'm not feeling entirely wrung out by the process. All the more reason to emerse myself in Him daily- give Him more to wring out of me, so to speak... thanks again for the uplifting words.