Sep 15

Sep 15 How Stress Fuels My Productivity: Embracing Pressure to Get Things Done

T.K.

mardi vingt-sept août deux-mille-vingt-quatre

Yeah buddy, rolling like a big shot
— Ice Cream Paint Job, Chanson de Dorrough

Who knew I knew how to draw music notes, and why did that piece of music come to mind in this moment as I clicked my pen and opened this little white notebook, sitting in the park as the sun is well into its setting? I feel quite lovely, I do. Who is it thanks to?

First of all, giving glory to the Most High. That’s what they say, right? No, seriously, I’m thankful for the breath in my body and the breeze blowing across my breasts.

The sunset is unceasingly beautiful. The palm trees waving in the wind before a gradient of purple to lilac to peach to the palest sherbert orange. The trees below make a dark silhouette to welcome its set. The colors deepen as it darkens. La danse classique, forces pulling in opposite directions creating an ease to the eyes through intensity, nothing short of magical.

journal: MD Paper — Made in Japan

It’s Saturday, the sixth day of my seven-day week that starts on lundi and I’ve only published one piece of content to my blog (not counting when I’ll press “enregistrer et publier” on this one. I don’t want to burn myself out with this blogging thing only a month into getting back into it, but I also find productivity-inducing to be slammed. I don’t know if the whole getting burn out concept applies to my personality type and/or the way the dopamine circuits are wired in my brain. When I’m in the weeds, as we said in my restaurant days, I’m exhilarated.. Is that too strong of a word? I won’t say getting table after table after table without a break from the time I clock in ‘til the time the FOH manager locks the doors is the same feeling as smiling and laughing uncontrollably in the seat of a ride at the Minnesota State Fair, however, dare I say it’s pretty darn similar?

Wait, why did a Google search of “tee.krys” remind me that I have a Medium account where these random journal entries can go. Hm.. well, for this one, I’m here now, donc, I digress..

Yeah, some of my fellow servers would be beat down by the end of their shift, whereas I’d feel more energized and alive than when I came. I don’t want to say that I enjoy rushing and high-stress environments, mais that’s where I tend to thrive. In college, I couldn’t do any assignment until it was within a dangerously close distance of the deadline. Even now, when I travel, no matter how adamantly I convince myself that I’m going to get myself together in advance, it’s as if my brain won’t have a clue what I’m doing nor where I’m going until I need to be ordering a rideshare to head to the airport and BOOM! All of a sudden I’m the most efficient luggage packer with the perfect outfit ideas coming to me with ease. My girlfriends say that I like to be stressed and not to text them as I’m getting ready for a trip because it stresses them out from across the country the way that I play. I don’t understand how you haven’t learned your lesson, TK. Me neither.

Though I seem to enjoy stressing myself out, one of my favorite things to do around LA is watching the sunset, a calming and stress-relieving activity. | photo: aroundLAwithTK

That began to go slightly off-subject. Anyway, the more I have on my plate, the better I seem to function. My old co-worker B.Barry and my sister Taylor are tired of being hard-working women, clocking 60-hour weeks while watching me only go to a shift or two, if they’re lucky, anyway. For the sole purpose of adding pressure to my flexible schedule, I’m going to go get me a lil’ job that I don’t need (nor want). And, I’ll keep maintaining this 12-week content strategy of which I’m at the end of week 4, continue weekly French courses at Alliance Française and ballet classes at fitness studios, on top of getting a minimum of 10,000 steps in daily. Baby, don’t let me get a new bicycle, I’ll be back getting in bikes rides around LA.

Hmm.. Being in week 4 of posting four pieces of content per week to aroundLAwithTK is already longer than I’ve ever kept any initiative going that I’ve set for myself. Maybe because I involved someone else, my childhood friend Marcus (and by “involved” I mean I’ve conversed extensively enough with him about my personal lifestyle blog and he has been kind enough to donate opinions on the subject, as well as share helpful tips that he came across randomly). - OR - (or and), I was already in the flow of going to my fitness studio classes almost so regularly some of them are darn near my set schedule. B. Barry says I don’t play about my fitness studio classes, she says I respect reporting to them more than I do work. And I can’t deny it. Baby, signing up for that wellness network provided in-part by a previous employer was the best reoccuring purchase I’ve ever made. [eyeballs look around skull] Yeah, no doubt about it.

When I had a gym membership back home in Louisiana at LA Fitness and when I reinstated it at an LA fitness here in SoCal, I was giving money away; I did not use it. What else have I paid for monthly? I did have ClassPass and I used it much more than a traditional gym membership, but it didn’t allow me to go and do as much as my energy levels need to dispense energy without growing bored. The wellness network that I have now is unlimited and when I tell you that I get ALL my money’s worth, I get allllll of it. B. Barry says I get more than my money’s worth. I use tf out of this wellness network! You know what? I’ll go ahead and name drop because I want this wellness provider to stay in business; it’s called WellHub.

WellHub is a wellness network company that sells packages via partnerships with employers. A company becomes a member of WellHub then that company forwards the opportunity of the wellness network to employees. For example, my emails about joining WellHub (which was called GymPass at the time) came from the HR department of a company whose employee roster I am on. I entered my employee number when following the link in the email to sign up for WellHub and that is how I received/pay the discounted rate for this wellness network. Whew child, what a tangent. Explaining how to use WellHub and why WellHub is worth it can be an entire blog post of its own.

Maintaining some relative sort of consistency with a blog, as I never have in the years of having this domain name, is likely in large part to having somewhere I have to be (according to me, nobody is making me go, but in my mind it’s mandatory), multiple times a week, putting some sort of constraints on my schedule. And I want to say put more constraints on my schedule with more obligations, such as a lil’ part-time seasonal retail job at the mall, will further increase productivity. More time restrictions equals more pressure, allowing me to create a sense of urgency, which (unfortunately?) is one of the only measures that gets me moving. FOR NOW. It’s possible I may figure out another way to force myself into productivity. As of now, this has been the first method to work.

Whew child, how’d me opening a new blog post draft box to share a few lines from a physical notebook end up being me rambling? That’s a rhetorical question. It’s me. It’s TK, she always has something to say. Which is furthermore why there’s not reason for me not to write every single day. Come’on bih, shii.. (Cursing myself out deplorably has been tried and wasn’t proved to be efficient)

Girl, it’s almost 1 o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t have sat down at this desk no later than 10pm. Uht uhn. And had plenty of time all day, yeah. I was home from my morning fitness studio class and farmers’ market run by ‘bout 10am. See, once again, it was a time restriction that made my wheels spin. Nothing else was on my schedule for the day (after a girl ghosted me on getting together to shoot content); pressure didn’t come in until late, knowing I want to get some sleep because I need to go to a fitness studio class in the morning.

(Though sleep is vital for health and wellness, and I know this scientifically, it still doesn’t provide enough pressure to move me on its own. Similarly to how I apparently enjoy subjecting myself to stress, I enjoy subjecting myself to fatigue.. in this very moment, for example, my eyelids grew heavy long ago, but in a sadistic way I subconsciously find pleasure in fighting through the force of fatigue; I need to find another way to channel this reward/motivation circuit or whatever tf goes on in my wired ahyass brain).

Let me stop typing because it’s already going to take me another good hour to add blog images and SEO details.. ‘cause girl, why you can’t close the computer?? Takes a minute, but once I get going, I’m going..

Thank you for riding, riders. ♥︎