What calms me

My new best friend.

I have been feeling stressed lately (comps-gradschool-scarychemicals-purposeinlife???!!!), so I've been doing a couple of things to try and get back to a balance point.  These things include:

• Exercising regularly
• Identifying and removing stressors 
• Not always possible, i.e. Comps, but good to ID anyway
• Eating better
• Keeping a log of what I eat seems to help. Tortilla chips are not a meal!
• Carrying around a stress ball everywhere
• Listening to relaxing music

As far as the relaxing music goes, I've found that one thing calms me more than anything else. And that's the sound of rain and thunderstorms.

I also generally work off my external monitor and only rarely use my laptop screen, so I tried several images on the laptop screen to see if any had a calming effect. Out of all the things I tried (dolphins, the sea, etc), this one works the best:

ahhhhh.... (Photo from National Geographic)

It's a photo of the Hoh Rainforest in Washington state. When I look at it, I swear my heart rate drops by fifteen percent.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from the fact that rain and big tall shadowy trees calms me, but here are some thoughts:

1) I am somehow channeling all the time I spent studying in the library at the University of Puget Sound, which was my absolute favorite place to study. It had these big huge windows that you could look out at the evergreen trees and the rain.

Photo of Collins Memorial Library from pugetsound.edu

2) After I graduate, maybe I should look for a job somewhere with forests and big trees. Oregon, Washington, Maine, Alaska, Upstate New York? Volcano, on the big island?

Maybe something else is going on?

So that's why I'm so flippin' pale!

Well, whatever it is, I'm really grateful for the effect the combination rain sounds and rainy forest has on my psyche. And maybe a vacation to Forks is in order.