Stress Monster

In career and in personal life, the greatest challenges are those things which are beyond one's control. I have found that no matter how carefully I plan or how meticulous I am with the details, there exists the possibility for something to shit the bed.

And that causes stress; giant, steaming, heaps of stress of the kind that interrupts sleep and makes eyes twitch.

For instance, as a new business, I had to cobble together my supply chain and once I got everything all sorted and allowed myself a moment to breath, BAM, the FDA rears their ugly, bloated, red tape enshrouded, head and decides to hold an urgent load. Murphy's Law. The more urgent the load, the slower bureaucracy moves. Period.

Frustrating.

Also, it seems that we have an issue every month at one of our rental houses. From roof leaks to air conditioner breakdowns, we've been shelling it out since the spring. I never imagined that life as a landlord would resemble that of a boat owner wherein the happiest memories are the day you buy and the day you sell. Unfortunately, we are among the millions of people in this country for whom houses have become albatrosses slung about the neck. We are just trying to hang in there until the market gets turned around. From what I can see, it looks like we could be waiting a LONG TIME.

Finally, there is the move. There are an incomprehensible number of things that need to be checked off the list before we depart in 7 weeks, give or take a few days. SEVEN WEEKS. What happens with something like this is that the best intentions get slaughtered in the face of easier routes. I was going to clean the house personally because a) I'm good at it and b) I'm cheap. Then, I took a look at what it would take to accomplish that and decided that a couple of hundred bucks is a small price to pay for my sanity. I'm going to hire people to do it instead.

Ah well. That's life, right?

I suppose but I can tell you that I am looking forward to being on the other side of it all, both mentally and geographically.