Good morning, Monday sweetie darling. The weather was beyond this weekend, and today is no joke either as New York is alive and well and wholly Autumnal. A funny thought occured to me as I decompressed from a doozy of a week this weekend, so this goes out to my young readers:
A few words about stress management...
As many of you nursed a hangover or two this weekend, I myself was happily hanging out at home, with nary a cute outfit or trendy DJ in sight. After a few weeks of constant work, I hopped in a cab back home Friday night with chest pains and a bit of a panic attack. Many of you, deep in the throes of your twenties or even early 30s, may have dealt with those pesky chest pains in a different way than i did. Maybe you were waiting all week to get your freak on, go to a bar, a club, or some other alcohol soaked sweat factory to completely forget the week. It's amazing to me how as a young person, all you want to do after a hard week of work is get completely snockered. Believe me, I was there once, but damned if I even know the directions how to get there anymore.
I'm amazed as an older person that all I crave after a week like that is some normalcy, some solitude, some routine following a week getting dressed at the crack of dawn and foregoing every day life in favor of frantic deadlines. At times like these, I crave a morning gym session to get my body right. I covet a walk through the neighborhood to pick up the dry cleaning that has been sitting lonesome for a week down the block (oh there's that Madewell polka dot dress I was frantically searching for in the dark as I attempted to dress myself). I was dying to take Khan around and do one of my favorite walks- from my home in Cobble HIll to Dumbo, taking in the gorgeous views of downtown Manhattan along the way and smiling as I watched his sweet little prance through the borough. To me, the worst thing about feeling completely stressed is the dismissal of the normal- the inability to go the gym, the refrigerator that remains empty because there's no time to buy food. To me, what's much worse than a Saturday morning hangover is running out of toilet paper. It makes me feel strangely irresponsible and out of control. Both of those things used to feel fun, ps. Not anymore. Being grounded is way more important to me than any epic night out, and that's the truth.
Now before you dismiss me as a complete Puritan and teetotaler, i'm far from it. I can easily sit home on a Friday night and finish off a bottle of wine while catching up on my favorite shows, and sometimes a good belt of Bourbon is the only way. But as I began to feel slightly normal and less frantic and frazzled on Saturday, it was because I had time to do all of those things in life that I need to deal with stress- boring as they may seem, I need normalcy to survive these days, and no darkened VIP room can compete with that.
I remember wondering late one night at some club downtown, on the late side of my 20s, if I would ever have a normal existence. If I would ever just want to stay home and not go out and cause all kinds of trouble. I'm here to tell you that one day, as you notice a few more gray hairs, you'll be so happy to just stay the heck home and take stock of all those things in your personal life that keep you sane. It's just a funny thought that instead of wanting to get super fucked up and lose my mind to the beat of a good dj, I'm more in favor of gaining control. Just quite a switch after an elegantly wasted youth/twenties/thirsty early thirties. With work being so stressful, home is not only where the heart is, it's where the sanity is. I'm forever in search of normalcy to help me deal with the craziness. And that my friends, is my new normal. Cause that's what's up this keeping it together kind of Monday in the 212. Whatever your poison is, I hope you're coping with those Monday blues, cause really there's no place like home. XO