Dealing With Stress

I don't think anyone who has met me can describe me as a calm person. I have a growing number of white hairs to prove it. Alas, I am prone to over-analysing situations which can often turn into an unproductive downward spiral of thought. I was somewhat hoping the the removal of my normal causes of stress - work, bills, driving through Sydney traffic, would help me become the serene goddess I've always dreamed of. You know the kind that wears flowy dresses and caresses swans whilst playing the harp. 

But yet another holiday illusion shattered. I am still that panicky, neurotic person that is uanble to fully function under duress. Take for example the time we had just arrived in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. Kevin had booked a lovely hotel room near the lake with great internet ratings. He had a map of the location and gave me the option of a taxi or walking. Since I was still weak from altitude sickness I opted to taxi it but the first guy we hailed didn't want to take us for reasons unbeknownst to us as we still hadn't learnt any Spanish  (terrible I know). Stuff it, let's just walk I said. Here's how that went.

I was actually trying to be really brave about it but I wasn't fooling Kevin who can always gauge how stressed I am by how fast I walk. I was walking REALLY fast by nightfall. There was nothing and nobody around and we had no idea where we were. We finally stumbled on small house who called a taxi for us who took us to the right place. Which ironically was just metres away from where we turned off but we hadn't seen the sign in the dark. 

So it actually worked out fine and the family who helped us were so nice but in my mind I had envisaged a Bolivian pyscomurderer just waiting for lost tourists to wander by. So that was a lot of stress for no reason and probably the best thing to do is just to have optimistic faith that things will work out for the best. Things like this happen all the time when traveling. You get lost on countless occasions, you lose things in hostels, you get a nasty abscess that needs a $400 visit to the doctor, you accidently back into someone's car whilst they're standing right there or you catch body lice from a horrible hostel. All these things have happened to us in the last 4 months and yet none have been so terrible to be permanently traumatising and a few are even kind of funny now.

So I guess my point is that life is a balance of good and bad and you can't control what's going to happen every moment, actually it's a complete waste of time and energy mullling over things you can't change. Now I'm off to wake the zen master Kevin so we can go out for macaroons, because some things you CAN change and tip them towards your favour.