Next time someone tells me that sci-fi stories don’t need to be consistent because ‘it’s all made-up!’, I’m going to hit them with a shoe. And believe it or not, that’s my measured response after weeks of intense therapy. I know I always have a problem with people criticising things that I like, and I shouldn’t take it personally because they don’t MEAN it personally, but…it IS personal. I am the things that I like. Without ‘Space Rangers’, ‘Intergalactic Conflicts’ and ‘Water-Bee’, I am nothing. There’s nothing to me; I’m like a hollow person held up with string and…wasps. A wasp string man, psychologically propelled forward by visits to the psychologist and stress management courses in my off-hours.
The psychologist visits are mainly to work out my anger issues, but the stress management is…well, for the stress. I was told to go on one by my boss, who noticed that I wasn’t really performing that well. Someone would insult one of my favourite shows, I wouldn’t be able to respond to them in a way I would like, and it would just ruin my day. I take it way too personally, and then I’d start thinking about all the people out there insulting the stuff that I like, and it would just be this unhealthy cycle of bad thoughts and nowhere to vent them. I guess it must be a stress thing, hence why I’m on the stress course.
Is stress that thing when you start breathing a bit faster than usual, and you feel trapped by your own thoughts, and you just keep thinking about the things that are ruining your life, and you can’t stop and it trashes your productivity? That’s probably it. Never been great at self-analysis. Workplace stress management training seems to have been invented to help people with that kind of thing. They even encouraged me to share my exact problem, and NO ONE ever asks me to talk about Water-Bee in real life. And there was no judgement for my opinions either. It was a safe place.
-Maurice