Escaping from stress

I love to cook. I'm especially good at baking. I've only recently begun to experiment with different recipes and methods of cooking. I made my first successful rue last month, for instance. That was something I'd never thought I could do.

Baking is a comfort for me, both the action and the baked goodies I get after I'm finished. Good day or bad, my mom loved to cook. She's the one who taught me to bake and for all the things she did to me, I can honestly say she never went so far as to deliberately burn me, cut me, or any of the other myriad things that could happen in a kitchen. When I was old enough to manage on my own, she let me start baking without supervision. Since this was a way to keep her off my back, I jumped on the chance.

As I've gotten older, I've found it to be a release from a stressful day. I don't have much room to work with for baking here, but I've managed a few times to get something in the oven. What I've baked has come out good and I've shared it with everyone in the house.

Himself derives comfort in his music. He listens to some rather twisted stuff, at a volume I prefer not to deal with. In my case, I put on my earbuds and can drown him out most of the time. He also finds comfort in his video games, especially Minecraft. He can lose himself for hours building and creating in that game. Most of the time he does both at the same time. He'll put his earphones in when I go to bed, or when he really wants to focus.

Himself has always found an escape in video games. He's played Everquest, World of Warcraft, Eve Online. He plays multi-player games with our nephew and his friends, mostly stealth shooter games. Himself plays Minecraft and spends time on an online verbal chat program talking to people playing in the same server he is. He loves it.

As he's gotten older, his taste in games has changed. At first it was running around using magic to kill everything (EQ and WoW). Then it was having a spaceship and doing the same thing. He even became a pirate and attacked other ships with a corporation (EO). Now, for the most part, it's building and creating things.

Everyone uses a different way to escape from stress. For some, it's listening to music. For others, it's going for a walk or jogging. Books, TV shows, movies, all of these are good ways to escape stress as well. It's a way to let our mind process what we're dealing with and come to an understanding of and a possible solution to deal with it.

What do you do to relax and take some of the stress off? Do you have a set ritual to help you focus on something else, to let your mind work its way through what's causing you problems?