I was wondering why I am constantly busy, why I am constantly experiencing moderate stress, and what stress means to me, and I found myself writing here. I guess it’s better than thinking to myself.
I am accustomed to a certain level of stress. When it exceeds that level, I consider abandoning my job and opening a café, thereby engaging in a more stressful business life. If it is less than that, I feel compelled to save the world, creating work for myself.
When I think about the source of stress, a large part of it is work-related. Some of it is about survival, some is about daily concerns like what to eat instead of pasta today, some is about existential issues, and a small part is about “time is passing, we’re getting older, we’re all going to die.”
Work-related stress is generally stress that I create for myself. The main reason is that I don’t do the job I want to do. I always imagined myself as a wise man, but a wise man who explains his problems to materials. I will do electronic design, I will solve any problems that arise, no one will interfere with my work, I won’t have to deal with people, I will be the man they say can solve this job if anyone can. The guy who does his job, lights a cigarette with a cool gesture, and walks out of the office. Or the guy who does his job with a silencer, wipes it with a handkerchief, and disappears into the darkness.
It didn’t turn out that way. I studied electrical engineering just so I wouldn’t have to deal with people. That wasn’t enough, so I got a master’s degree in nanoelectronics so no one would understand my problems. In the end, I found myself working as a project manager at a company that produces communication modules like modems. Life is a joke. Now I’m dealing with people, and in the telecommunications field at that. I’m trying to make sure both people and devices communicate properly.
Work life feels like theater to me. At home, I think people aren’t the same as they are at work. I try to be myself. When I am myself, there’s constant conflict. There’s an upside, though. People trust me more, they open up more, which makes my job easier in terms of managing the work. I know what people like and dislike. But having to talk every day, follow up on big shots’ work, determine their priorities, strive to keep them focused on the main goal, report on all of this, account for it, solve problems… it’s impossible not to go crazy.
I used to think that everyone knew their job and what they had to do, but that wasn’t the case. Five years of project management experience changed my outlook on life. I learned that big shots aren’t really that big and how ridiculous they can be. I’ve come to realize that those in charge don’t think about anything, ignore even the simplest things, and don’t understand them. Especially engineers—they’re people who lack even the most basic communication skills, empathy, and, ironically, rationality.
So the source of my stress is communication. The very thing I’ve been avoiding has come back to haunt me.
If we set aside the question of what to eat, existential issues, and time, the source of my stress is communication in daily life.
When you have meetings all day long, there’s no social energy left. In the workplace theater, the things I swallow to avoid belittling the audience can suddenly explode for no reason. Or, on the contrary, it puts me in the mindset of “even if I explain it, no one will understand.”
They say, “You never call.”
I don’t feel like calling. I don’t want to spend time on it. I feel like saying, “What’s the point of talking?” Anyway, 90% of what we talk about is meaningless, just small talk. It doesn’t benefit anyone, but it’s an emotional obligation.
They say, “Come on, you’re always at home, you’ll open up.”
When am I at home? I want to say, can’t I even have two minutes alone? I’m not the kind of person who tries to forget my troubles, joys, and sorrows by sharing them. Understand that. I’ve filled my social quota for today. I’ll sit alone and enjoy myself. I’ll read a little, talk to myself, share a little dialogue as if I were writing, listen to some music, and enjoy some art. When I spend time outside, the little free time I have becomes completely wasted, but I can’t say that. This time, they say, “What arrogance!” But the problem is the difference in our perceptions of communication and socializing. Instead of talking about something we have no influence over or a third party who has no right to respond for three hours, if we talked about or did constructive things, my social energy wouldn’t diminish. For example, wouldn’t it be nice to discuss why and how earthquakes happen, how clouds form, how tornadoes occur, why the sun is harmful to the skin, why our heads ache, how certain foods affect us, why I have a belly, what benefit it brings me, what it feels like to not have a belly, or what motivates a murderer?
You’re always busy—what do you do in your free time?
I’m busy because I don’t have free time. Most of my time is spent on work, some on sleep, some on eating, some on other necessities, and some on learning—that is, nourishing myself mentally and emotionally. I want to ask how you find the time to sit around gossiping for hours, or how you can be so idle as to say, “If you love me, why don’t you call me?” but I can’t.
When I can’t say it, it turns into stress, anxiety, and strange behavior. So far, I’ve seen few people who understand this, who are similar, and who respect it. They’ve become my closest friends. The theater also ends with interaction with them because there’s no such thing as “I couldn’t say it” in my life.
Going back to the stress factors I skipped over.
What should I eat? The solution is to make a plan and automate the process. At the very least, setting a fixed shopping list solves this problem and also provides the necessary flexibility. Whatever comes to mind is at your fingertips.
The solution to existential problems is definitely absurdity. For example, when a glass breaks at home, it causes chaos in our house. While one person rushes to clean up, another acts as a spectator, commenting, “Be careful, you’ll cut your hand,” and another tries to ensure the safety of the environment. If you imagine the one ensuring safety as an FBI agent, the commentator as a sports analyst, and the cleaner as a superhero with superpowers, the stress disappears. Or, for example, if you focus on the glass, the stress goes away. Stay strong, don’t let yourself be unemployed because of an incompetent person. It’s not worth it.
I don’t know the solution to the stress of time passing, us aging, and all of us eventually dying. I’ve just noticed that when I learn more, focus more, and spend more of my time learning, this stress disappears. Of course, this needs to be systematic. When you approach it with autistic anxiety and turn it into attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the stress actually increases. While thinking, “I have to do this, I have to do that,” time passes. The process is not satisfying at all. Or when I approach it by saying, “This has to be done at this time,” it doesn’t work either. This time, I act as if I have no social life. When I can’t do that task at that time, I feel like destroying everyone who is wasting my time. My solution is to set short-term, achievable goals, do what I can, and carry over what I can’t do to the next time.
Financial stress is a completely different matter, of course, but stress over things we can’t change is entirely unnecessary and self-imposed. For the things we can change, it is necessary to identify the stress factors and think about them.
Accepting life is quite difficult, especially if you can’t find any meaning in it. If you don’t have something to cling to, like faith, clear goals, or absurd passions, accepting stress is important.
As with all my writings, I don’t reread or revise this. I leave it as it is, with its mistakes and flaws. The coherence of the topic is still lacking. If you’ve read this far, congratulations.
Final Note
I had been going through a hard time when I wrote this article. All has passed and this kind of reflections helped a lot. It showed me what I can do and what I cannot. How to adapt any environment and having power to start over anytime when needed. Now, I started a new career, most of the stress has gone.
bahadirhancicek 
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