My Relate Session, 18th September

Gosh, this is getting confusing. I think about things to say on one subject, then I realise they're related to another subject, so I think "Well, I might as well just summarise it rather than detail" then I think "Yeah, but I had been intending on writing a post about that, and it seems silly to go to the trouble of summarising it only to go into detail the next day - surely more sensible to start on the detail, and refer back to it."

Well, I defeated myself with that logic ;) See, I had been planning on writing this post at some point anyway anyway (one of three days from last week that I thought people would like to hear more about), but then I thought I'd spend my time talking about wedding and marriage, following Northern Monkey's lead. Well, until I realised that some of what I was going to write there was related to this.

Now look at that, I've ended up saying the same thing twice... The summary the first time and the detail the second... What a stupid thing to do ;) I should have simply written the detail first and then referred back to it ;)

Anyway. This was my second (and a half) solo Relate session and, having spent enough time rambling about all things current (such as my blog), RT was finally able to get around to asking more "historical" and general questions.

I'm blogging this for a few reasons:
1. It might be interesting
2. There were a few questions that I wasn't really "prepared" for, not big things, just things I couldn't think of an answer to on the spot. Now, perhaps that's the idea ;) But, well, I thought they were mildly interesting things to muse over anyway :)

From memory (I didn't take notes ;), the conversation went something like this:

• Briefly: A spot on my blog (a blog spot, if you will ;)
  
• Dealing with stress
  
• My parents
  
• My wife
  
• Anything else to say or ask
  

Well, you all know by now what my decision was already with regards to my blog :) I checked with RT that she had no preference as to whether I told Mrs Monkfish at home, or at a Relate session together. My preference was to do it at home (hah!), and she agreed that sounded best. So I decided I'd tell my wife some time between then and my wife's solo session the following Monday.

The next question I got asked was about how did I deal with stress.

Well that was one I hadn't really thought about before :) So the best I could come up with was "Umm... I guess I don't really think about it". I then 'clarified' with, "But in a different way to my wife. She probably thinks about not thinking about it, whilst I just don't."

Pretty poor answer, huh? ;) In the time since then, several more bits and bobs plopped into mind of their own accord. I don't think I'm a "stressed" person by nature (whilst I don't think of myself as being so specifically, I'm probably too laid back most of the time ;), so I think that's why I hadn't considered specifically what de-stressed me.
Of course, thinking about THAT some more since then, I realised that people who aren't stressed by nature are probably the type who most likely need a way of dealing with it when it hits them. People who are stressed all of the time probably have their own ways of dealing with it already well defined.

I think overall, doing almost anything which doesn't cause me to feel more stressed helps me to relax and unwind a bit. So whether it's watching a film, playing a game (on a loosely related note, I finished single-player Halo for the first time last night :), working, walking, wa..just kidding ;) But I even quite enjoy doing the boring old weekly shop in general :)

I'd like to say that in general, if something stresses me out, that I attempt to fix the problem (the cause of the stress) rather than the symptom (the relief of the stress). In reality though, I'm just not aware that I'm stressed by stuff that often, and in this case, it's not exactly a problem I can easily do something about.

My parents... I'll "deal" with that post separately, I think :)

My wife... Now here a question hit me. One that had occurred to me before, but I had eventually managed to realise that it was a fruitless exercise simply trying to remember. The question exactly was, "What do you like about your wife?"
I thought about it for a bit. I thought about it for a bit more. I answered, "I... don't know. That's part of the problem. But I recognise that I'm not exactly in the best of 'places' to attempt an answer right now."

When we later had the conversation about my blog and everything, this was roughly one of the things I told my wife. It was the thing she took away from that conversation as being most painful.

Anything else... I thought of one thing not directly related to me. I may mention that in the post about My Parents.