(This was in my drafts, unpublished. Originally from 2014)

Well, it's this September, and guess where I am! 21, unemployed, and still in my parents house. Awesome.

But, I've been living life to the fullest, right? Embracing risk, living life on the edge, being a general badass. You know, cool things to brag about in a blog post.

Nope. I tried to start a couch-to-5k running program and nearly died on the side of the road (literally laid down in the ditch because I thought I was going to pass out), spent 10 minutes at a local festival before nearly having a heatstroke and crawling home to sit under the fan for the rest of the day, and traveled across the country only to leave a friend's wedding early because I felt sick. Fascinating!

(Ok: I did actually do some fun things this summer. I went to a cousin's bachelorette party, attended 2 weddings, explored Seattle, hosted a garage sale, and went kind of crazy making baby stuff for an expecting friend.)

But you know, looking back at everything, I don't think I'm really built for a super-exciting, risk-taking crazy life. One of the more frequent activities from this summer was visits to the doctor. I spent a lot of my summer feeling pretty sick and trying to figure out what was going on. After a plethora of tests, we've made a diagnosis and, fortunately, it's nothing serious. I will, however, have to make some lifestyle modifications.

Most of these modifications aren't too bad. I mean, it's always hard to make changes to your lifestyle, but with my health, the benefits heavily outweigh the discomfort of change, and I will gladly make these changes. There is, of course, one change that's going to be less easy. My condition is heavily affected by my stress level.

Great.

If you know me or have read any of my blog posts at all, you know I'm not exactly a serene person. Type A all the way. I'm high-strung, kind of anxious, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform at a certain level that is remarkably hard to attain. I don't even think I can remember recent time when I haven't been stressed about something. In fact, right now, I am stressed about an upcoming check-up, still not having a job, my Pro Bono work, and lastly, I'm stressed about how I'm possibly going to control my stress level.

I guess I need to practice relinquishing control. I've posted about this before, I know. When you're stressed and feel like so many things are out of control (the job hunt, my health, feeling so far from any friends, etc.), your first instinct is to try to take control for yourself. This is bad. When you try to control everything, you don't actually change anything. In fact, things stay out of control, you just feel more personally responsible when things don't go how you think they should. Which makes you stressed.