As of late I have taken on a new role in life. With this new role comes the title “Pawn in the real estate waiting game”; a title I am not the least bit fond of. My husband and I have been posted to another military base and are currently waiting for our house to sell so that we can move on to the next phase of our journey that we have taken to calling “that darned house hunting trip.”
Our last posting was five years ago and in retrospect we went through all the same anxiety ridden stages that a military family endures during posting season. I know deep down that everything will work out in the end and letting my stress get the better of me isn’t helping any. I suppose it’s the lack of control over our immediate future which has thrown me off kilter. In an attempt to inject humor into this stressful stage of our lives I’ve decided to treat this posting like a board game of sorts. Let’s call it “The Military Game of Life”. A typical turn in the game goes as follows:
Your husband rolls the dice and lands on the career space of the board. He picks up a card and it reads:
Your career manager calls you into his office and tells you you’ve been posted. Put your life on hold and lose a turn.
OK…my turn! I roll the dice and land on the realtor space. I pick up my card and it reads:
The realtor you chose is a fool. He puts your house on the market for $10,000 more than the appraisal value and takes two weeks to list your house in local newspapers. Lose a turn, precious time and your mind.
See—is this a fun game or what?
Seriously though, not letting the stresses of moving under military circumstances is not an easy task. I turned to the Internet to see if I could come up with a great article to recommend for this post. The first article I discovered proclaimed April to be stress awareness month. Though I’ve been aware of my stress long before April came along, I decide to give this article a quick read through to see if there was any useful stress reducing tips.
The article ended up being completely devoid of any useful information but it did contain something that had me scratching my head. According to Health magazine the following is a list of the top 10 most stressful jobs:
1. Inner city high school teacher
2. Police officer
3. Miner
4. Air traffic controller
5. Medical intern
6. Stockbroker
7. Journalist
8. Customer service
9. Secretary
10. Waiter
Anyone else notice that the job of “soldier” is missing from this list? Knowing some of today’s youth I’d be willing to give you the inner city teacher one, and I’ll certainly grant you the police officer has a stressful job. I’m also willing to give credit where credit is due for the miner and air traffic controller but the fact that the job of soldier not only didn’t make the top five but got bumped out of the top 10 by customer service rep., secretary and waiter? I’m just not buying it…sorry!
I did, upon further Internet digging, discover a list of 18 things that a person can do to help reduce stress. I can personally vouch for the yoga as I’ve been trying to sneak in a 15 minute relaxation session via Rodney Yee’s A.M. yoga when I can and I always find I feel better for it.
Check out the list here and if you are trying to cope with stress I hope one or more suggestions on this list helps.
For serious help on how to relax during stressful times, visit the Families.com Mental Health Blog and the Learning to Relax series of blogs by Beth McHugh.