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?
