I Should Be Dead!

Or insane. Or both.

© Lyn Baxter

Since the beginning of July, I've had the following life events to deal with:

• Partner's career change (he's going to university for a year)
• Partner's lack of funding (I need to support him to the tune of an extra £10k)
• Partner's 3 months of indecision re pursuing his master's degree due to his lack of funding
• Partner's daughter and grandson moving back in with dad
• Partner moving half his furniture into my house, due to daughter not liking it
• Partner stressing over daughter moving back in, and there being nowhere in my house for his furniture
• Daughter's split with her partner, who is my granddaughter's dad
• Daughter's house move (mainly performed by me and partner)
• Daughter's ex-partner's house move (95% performed by me and partner)
• Eldest son's change of address (wholly performed by me and partner); it took us 8 weeks!
• Youngest son's psychological reaction to being the only offspring left at home
• Redecorating larger bedroom (including new carpet, new bed, new desk etc.) for youngest son, funded by partner before he realised how limited his financial reserves were
• Needing to pay back best part of £750 to my partner
• Moving some furniture into smaller bedroom, soon to be part office
• Middle son's ongoing battle to show loyalty to his dad, which has led to some seriously hurtful texts, facebook messages and a general air of distrust on his part
• A holiday with partner and my youngest and middle sons (!)
• Mother's ill-health - ulcers
• Mother's ill-health - thrombosis
• Mother's ongoing ill-health, which was a background issue before the extra problems, including heart failure, scarred kidneys, etc.
• Mother got burgled
• Partner's best friend died aged 54 (same age as partner)
• Partner's other best friend dealt with his grief by being so horrible, partner has now refused to have any more to do with the guy, so partner now mourning loss of two friends rather than one
• My day job work responsibilities changing
• My day job's team responsibilities changing
• New day job boss
• New team member, sitting next to me, who twitches whenever he's worried and knuckle-cracks whenever he decides to do some work. He's worried about 95% of the working day, including when he decides to start something new.
• Reshuffle of desks around the office, to suit the new boss's idea of how the team should be structured
• Notification of new team job (tailor-made for me) which I would have to interview for, which has spun off some good quality office politics amongst others who want their preferred candidate to be selected
• Car shunted by woman director in company BMW who refused to provide insurance details
• Car written off
• New car immediately developed the ability to stop the engine whilst driving along in third gear.
• Laptop - with all of my Kleeneze routes on it - spontaneously combusted the day my written off car was due to be collected.
• Had to buy new laptop and am still catching up with recreating my lists a week later.

According to the Holmes & Rahe Life Stress Test, I ought to be extremely ill by now - and the test hasn't kept up with today's stresses - half my stress triggers aren't even on the list. I've had to "best guess" what certain triggers would cost. My stress count for 2010 was around 850, where 300+ is bad news. My stress count in the past 3 months is 437! My partner's reaction when I told him was to point out that he'd got worse stress than me! I'll give you three guesses how that improved my stress levels...

Needless to say, I've had to focus on all of the above instead of building my Kleeneze business. So much so, that I'm effectively starting again from scratch.

I don't see that as a problem. It gives me  a chance to plan properly for the rest of this week, to better make use of the limited time available to me right now whilst making sure I have a decent plan to maximise income.

Any suggestions on how I can do better? Comments are always welcome. I'm just glad to be back!