My life revolves around schedules and organization. On the back of my door, I have a color-coded schedule of classes, work, community services groups, office hours, you name it. This schedule has my "mandatory" events for the week while my "optional" (still pretty mandatory) events are scheduled in my head. I go into nearly every day with a pretty good idea of my plan for the day: wake up at 7, eat breakfast, go to class, grab a protein bar, go to the gym, grab lunch, go to the library. You get the point. This is something I have always done. I want to know when I am going to do something. The thought of making plans as I go absolutely terrifies me, and I try to avoid that option at all costs.
By making these sometimes complex schedules, I like to think I am giving organization and structure to the chaos that is life in this society. I love when everything is perfectly planned out: my schedule, my room, my desk, my agenda, everything. The organization is calming. When things are not organized, it stresses me out. As trivial as it may sound, one of my biggest stressors regarding organization is a simple newspaper. I am a firm believer that when opened, all sections of the newspaper should be together, and the pages should be in the order in which they came. It stresses me out when the newspaper is folded backward, sections are missing, or it simply looks cluttered.
I understood that a newspaper is an uncommon stressor, but I believed that the other things that stressed me out were rather normal. Whether it be a big exam, big game, major social event, or simply keeping my routine the same, I always surrounded myself with people I knew would inspire me to do my best. All of my closest friends were either in the top ten of our graduating class, varsity athletes and/or had very active social lives. By hanging out with them, I strove for the academic, athletic and social "perfection" I believed they had achieved. If I didn't I would obviously be disappointed in myself, but I believed they would be disappointed in me as well.
I also believed that my family would be disappointed in me if I did not achieve this perfection. I had always done well in my activities, and not doing so would just be embarrassing. I knew they would be proud of me and my accomplishments, but I felt as though not being "perfect" would lose their pride and trust.
Obviously, this was not true. By striving for "perfection", I was essentially striving for stress. And I was stressed. I still am. I stress out about little things: making it to class adequately early, getting to the gym at a decent time, etc. And again, I thought that these stresses were normal, and some of them are. I was on the phone with my dad a few days ago, and I didn't even mention anything about stress. One of the things he said to me before hanging up was, "Stop stressing yourself out. You make things a way bigger deal than they need to be. It'll be fine." As much as I wanted to take his advice and believe it, it stressed me out a little bit. I guess to get rid of this stress and sense of "perfection," I will need to get out of my schedules and order, and learn to just live. Maybe just striving to enjoy life will be the least stressful of all.
