It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so the song says. Every time I hear that, I worry it might be the most anxiety-inducing time of the year. It may be December, but I’m not exactly in the holiday mindset yet. I’ve still got a few weeks before I’m off work for the holidays and I get to enjoy some time with family, so the usual Christmas activities just seem to add unneeded stress when you add them to my work day. Who has time to go Christmas shopping, decorate the house, send out cards and make plans to see friends on top of working, cleaning the house, paying bills and partaking in the usual adult responsibilities? Certainly not me, that’s for sure.
Because I’m starting to feel the strain of the holiday season, I thought it best to try some relaxation methods up until the point where holiday cheer takes over and I stop being so Scrooge-like. I actually did enjoy yoga and meditation a lot when I was younger and I was one of the rare few who took a 7 a.m. yoga class during my university years. And I have a relaxation CD that seems to work well, though I learned the hard way not to listen to it in the bath when I started relaxing a little too hard and nearly drowned.
But if I just used the methods I know would work, there wouldn’t be a funny article here. So instead, I’m going to rely on the Internet to inform me of the most relaxing activities I can take part in between work and the holiday rush.
According to Lisa Kaplin, a life coach, journaling is one of the best ways to reduce stress. Unfortunately, that’s kind of what I’m doing already for work, and I think starting a journal for fun might just remind me that I have to write this column.
Photography is another one people swear by, but that’s again too close to my actual job. Why should I be wasting time taking photos of flowers and sunsets when there are hockey games to cover? That relaxation technique would only waste precious camera memory space.
Apparently going back to childhood joys is a big stress-reliever, and many insist on taking part in playful activities like finger painting. I actually do have one of those adult colouring books with patterns to colour in that I pull out occasionally, but I can end up getting sloppy and colouring outside the lines, which just makes me stress out more. I mean, what if someone sees my terrible colouring skills? I’ll clearly be labelled as a fraud. How can I be an upstanding member of society when I can’t even colour in a pattern with colours that go together well? It’s called complementary colours, Schayla! You learned that in elementary art class!
Cooking is supposed to be a very relaxing activity. I’m sure it actually would be, if there was enough time in the day for it, but it can be difficult to not turn it into a chore. I made myself spaghetti just last night, which would have been fun if I wasn’t trying to speed it up so I wasn’t late for an appointment. And on top of that, once the food is made, I noticed my dirty countertops and full sink that resulted from the activity. Doing dishes is not currently a very relaxing activity for me.
Some people swear that planting trees is a good way to meditate on helping the environment. I wonder if that’s really the case, because I do remember planting some trees with my dad a few years ago. It took a lot of effort to try to protect the seedlings and give them what they needed to grow, and I think due to rain, they actually got flooded out. Today, the trees we planted to add greenery to the environment and make the world just a little healthier are completely dead. I worry trying to plant a tree now would just remind me of the ‘arborcide’ I committed. Plus the snow would probably kill this one too.
Many suggest cleaning as an activity that can reduce stress due to the repetitive movements of things like sweeping or folding laundry. This sort of works for me, but I usually end up more bored than relaxed. If I don’t have anything else I want to do, this boredom turns into that relaxed zen state I usually get with meditation. But if I have other things on my list, I just end up getting impatient, and every movement becomes an annoyed wish for the chore to be over. Some just suggest visualizing a clean house, but I think that would just convince me that my apartment is too dirty and leave me panicking over imagined dust.
Though I don’t think visualizing a dirty house will help either. My sister can’t watch the show Hoarders because when she sees rooms full of disgusting, dirty knick-knacks, she starts thinking about how badly she needs to clean out her closet and can’t rest until she’s gotten the cleaning done.
I have to admit, though, that seeing all these relaxation techniques that are actually just activities I take part in in my day-to-day life is very interesting. Maybe the secret to relaxing during the holidays is to just stop thinking of the things I do every day as work and more as something to enjoy. Life is a gift, after all.
A gift, huh? Maybe I’m in the holiday spirit after all!
