DEALING WITH STRESS

I've had to take time out to stop working in Church as I did before I started working, this is because I'm looking to find my balance, especially with my health on the line. I work in the media department in my church and would usually attend the first service which starts at 6:30, and close after the 3rd service which ends by 4:00 PM. I started having heart palpitations after a month and was always feeling tired on duty. At a point, my HOD in church started complaining thinking I was making it up to avoid working meanwhile in reality I had started having health issues. It grew worse when I saw that I get tired easily from any little work and knew I needed to see the doctor as soon as possible.

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I work Monday to Friday and sometimes Saturdays and would still go to church and do all that work on Sunday. So technically I was working Sunday to Sunday without rest and it was already telling on my health. I knew I needed to do something and do it fast else I would have no one to blame for my stressful life. The first thing I did was take a sick leave from work which was already in my third month. I was already feeling sick and needed that time out, so I rested for two and a half working days. My rest ran into the weekend giving me more days to rest and on Sunday I decided it was best I stayed home. Guess what; I didn't die, and no one even called to check on me. It was then I realized that it would be how life would go on if I died working like my life depended on it.

The next thing I did was to start eating lots of fruit and eat more often. In a real sense, I eat well to see well, and when I'm tired I eat again… But due to the economic situation of things, eating out was becoming more expensive by the day, so I decided I would take cooked food to work at every opportunity I got and later take cheap snacks to help myself. Other times when the food thing ain't working or there's no money for food and I'm getting stressed, I will take 1 hour 30 minutes to do anything but work. It could be chatting on the Neoxian City Discord server, or watching a movie, or chatting with some close friends depending on what takes my mind off work at that moment.

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Even with all these methods in place, I'm not sure I deal with my stress very well. This is because I like to see any job I'm doing through to the end. I'm never comfortable knowing there are pending jobs waiting for me, and for that reason I find myself spending overtime at work. Not Just any amount of overtime, I'm talking about 3-5 hours of overtime. A lot of times I even end up coming late in the middle of the night and have to wake up early for work the next day. It's just how I work which is unhealthy. I'm still trying to figure out how I can balance that, but for now, two things I ensure I do is never to carry my office work home, and never joke with my resting days. Sometimes I might attend one or two of those services on Sunday and ensure I do not do anything that stresses me in church.

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE GHANA PROMPT FOR THE WEEK.