…and for that matter, Raspberries to getting up in the early afternoon, or any time you’re not ready for it.  But mostly, these raspberries are for that special morning hour which demands us to leave the warm and cozy comfort of our beds to face the world yet another day.

I have to admit, I am not a morning person.  I will stay in bed as long as possible–even if it means ignoring the fact that I have needed the bathroom for an hour.  Part of me is still exhausted when I’m asked to rouse, and the other part of me wonders what good reason I have to leave the happiness I find in my pillow.  Work?  Bringing kids to school?  An early appointment?  All pale in comparison to, well, being snug.

So I lie in wait, knowing that the inevitable will come–rather soon.  I will have to get out of bed and face the day.  That magic number which my brain dizzily makes up in the misty morning fog, but never truly comprehends, is flashing on my alarm clock.  All ambitions of an early start have been pushed off until now.  The snooze button (my dear friend) has been abused.  My alarm clock, which is usually quite pleasant waking me with bird chirps or sounds of waves, is now beeping angrily like every other alarm clock in America.

I get up.  Begrudgingly.  Like a kid being forced out of bed and into geometry class.  Only now, it is I forcing myself up.  I get ready for my day almost spitefully.  Then it is a blur of water, hair products, fast breakfast, and lunch kits before I somehow appear at work on time.

Let me clarify that it is not the actual morning which I hate, it is the fact that mornings make me have to stop doing something I am comfortably enjoying–plus wrenching my eyes open when they don’t want to be is just painful.  I almost entitled this raspberry: Raspberries for Mornings, but I actually like mornings.  On the rare occasion which I am out of the house right at sunrise, I am awed by the beauty and freshness of the morning.  I actually enjoy the clean cool air and early morning birds.  And I wonder why I don’t get out more often in the morning–like any time when I don’t have to pick up someone at the airport on a 7am flight.

So being up is not the problem, it is getting up.  Getting up in the morning is stressful.  I’ll stop at that because I feel like I don’t really have to convince you of this one.

The irony is, we know we have to get up at some point.  The question I ask myself is: why do we do it later rather than earlier?  Does it really hurt less? Since this raspberry is quite a doozie for me, enjoy a chronicle of my daily efforts.  I’ll let you know what works and what failed miserably.

Theory #1:  Preparing a Nice Morning Will Motivate Me to Have More Desire to Get Up and Face the Day

Perhaps the real stressor here is not when we get up (5 am or 7 am) but how we get up (grumpy, at the last minute, ready to rush).  Therefore I will fashion my remedy around this hypothesis.

Stress Source: Feeling exhausted due to the fast pace of it all and leaving no space to appreciate the day.

Stress Relief: 1) A peaceful and fresh awakening, 2) Sufficient home prep time, 3) Self-time before having to be somewhere, and 4) Plenty of transit time

Anxiety over money and finances is very common, especially these days.  If you’re worried about how you’re going to make it through this month, you are definitely not alone.  This morning, I was trying to get into my locked office door and having no success.  My coworker suggested trying to jimmie the door open with a credit card.  When I handed her one, she said, “well, one that you don’t care about.”  I said, “don’t worry, there’s no money on it anyway!”  to which she responded, “I hear ya.”

Everyone’s broke.  And it’s not even that money seems to fly away, it’s that it was never there to begin with!  In 2009, being broke doesn’t mean not having any money, it means running out of credit.

I already have two friends who have declared personal bankruptcy in the past year.  Many more are teetering on the balance.

The funny thing is, for every friend of mine who is freaking out over the recession, I have another who was broke to begin with!  I have one friend who joked with me that we should write a book on how to survive the recession because really we live like it’s a recession all the time–stock market failures or not!

But enough of my musings.  We want answers.  Financial stress can be broken down into two pieces: 1) Fear of “losing it all” and 2) Just being tired of “not having”.

1) Fear of “Losing It All”

My Dad has this fear.  Actually, many dads have this fear.  The fear of if-I-fail-no-one-will-take-care-and-we-will-all-starve.  Oddly enough, I have found that those who manifest this fear the most are the ones who actually have more (versus those who have less).  My friend T, who has been down at the bottom of the barrel for a while, watching the rest of us cycle up and crash back down and cycle up again, does not possess this fear.  Because when you are at the bottom, really, there is no where else to go but up.

Stress source: Feeling that without your money, you will emotionally or physically perish.

Stress relief: Realizing that this is actually not true–many people survive with far, far less than you will ever experience in your lifetime.

Anxiety can be caused by a lot of things heaped upon our psyches over years and years of traumatic experience.  Just living gives you enough to be psychotic for.  For this Raspberry, I had to go back a few years to its source.  I remember a day when such things did not make me anxious, and now I’m really a wreck.  So what happened in between and what can I do now to convince myself that I am safe and okay?

While traveling, lots of stressful situations can arise.  And often, not all of them are attributable to you and your “baggage”.  You will encounter lots of people and situations out there which  may be stressful–or downright infuriating to you.  So take a deep breath and we will try to unpack some of your personal issues so that you can prepare for the others which will come.

Here are three of my favorite worries: Fear of Forgetting Something Important, Fear of Leaving Home, and Fear of Flying.

Fear of Forgetting Something Important

Here is a detailed excel spreadsheet checklist of things not to forget to pack while traveling (www.edelalon.com search for “packing”).  Sometimes, however, I feel that this type of detailed fanaticism is part of the problem.  With so many things to remember or check off, there is more to forget, and the risk of feeling incomplete hovers over my already overstuffed suitcase.

So instead of thinking about packing in a “what am I forgetting” fashion, let’s reverse it and think about what I really need.

Stress source: Feeling like I don’t have something important which could leave me unprepared to defend myself or survive at a location far from my home (the place I know is stocked with things to keep me safe and satisfied).

Stress relief: Reducing the laundry list of must-have’s to Travel Essentials–in other words, reducing the list to its simplest form.

We all have anxiety at one point or another.  We worry about many things for many reasons.  When we worry, it is tough to sort out what types of things really deserve our anxious attention.  Some things, like an ill relative, for example, are legitimate worries: everyone’s heart skips a beat when they hear of such a calamity.  Other things, however, like stressing out over not being able to find the particular T-shirt you wanted to wear today, should not inspire such worry.

On the whole, worry is not good for you.  It is healthy to be concerned about things which merit concern, but we have to be careful to see the big picture in life and to be able to reduce worries to their Simplest Form.  Like with fractions.  12/36 doesn’t seem so daunting when it’s reduced to 1/3.

So thoughts on such anxieties of all kinds will be discussed as raspberries.

The Cat blows “Raspberries for _________” 

Together we will try to reduce these stressors to their simplest forms and attempt to come up with strategies for their proper care and management.  These Raspberries are in no particular order.  The Cat cares not what order you stress in, she doesn’t stress at all.

-RC