I have a series of blogs I read...a rotation. One I check in on regularly is a cancer blog. You read that right. Specifically a blog a person keeps about dealing with cancer.

As often as they'll update,  I read a blog in which someone is struggling to maintain optimism, and sometimes, normaly,  in the midst of a struggle that goes deeper than anyone would want a struggle to go. It chronicles the daily details, struggles, issues: exhaustion, pain, frustration, with the broader and deeper implications that make such a struggle that much more moving: love, mortality, a push and pull struggle with time.


I also check out fashion blogs, lifestyle blogs, health blogs, blogs that pertain to my job.

And I read personal blogs. The vast amount dealing with frustrations around how to accomplish a daily to do list that is, in the scheme of things, ranging from critical to minimally important to their survival, love, mortality, and the push and pull struggle of time. Gripes about emails and meetings and carpools and how will they fit their run in and their dinner date and still make their deadline. It is always impossible, something always has to give.

And while I don't want this to be another "starving children in china" post, while I don't want to degrade your strugggle, bloggers hither and yon, I have something to day.

It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be anguish and frustration and resentment over the myriad of details you juggle and the to do list you will never finish.

I mean, sometimes it does. It really really does. And certainly not just when cancer is involved.

But when it doesn't, don't make it be. Being stressed, overwhelmed, put upon... will not make you more productive, will not make you more happy, and will not make you more important.

Emotions beget emotions: constant frustration, chronic anger, nonstop anxiety just creates more of the same regardless of the cause. And while instinct makes us want to justify every emotion the moment we acknowledge sometimes it better we examine the legitimacy of its cause, evaluate what activates our animal brain, and what is creating cycles that live on far outside themselves. For our own health, and for everyone around us.