Aloha Friday: Stress Relief

A few days ago, I felt like I was at the end of my rope.  So many stressful events happened one after another, pulling me in so many different directions that I just couldn’t take it anymore.  All I wanted to do was find a dark corner and hide from the world.  About the only thing that I felt like doing was playing Lego Batman on the Nintendo DS.

Last August, I wrote about NHL’s and my gaming addiction.  Since then, we’ve moved from Lego Harry Potter to Lego Indiana Jones and from that to Lego Batman.  I really like that Lego Batman lets you play in "Villain Mode" to help further their evil schemes… But more on that when I get around to reviewing the game.

I’ve found that, when I get stressed like this, I don’t function well.  All of my motivation to do that tasks that I need to do disappears.  Making myself complete them seems as hard as scaling a mountain.

Instead, I need escape from the situation.  Since I don’t have any friends locally, I can’t just head out with the guys.  Cooking is sometimes a stress reliever, but then I need to clean up from the cooking which adds more stress.  Watching TV will sometimes suffice, but I like being actively involved and feeling like I’m accomplishing something.

Enter video games.

Lego Batman isn’t so difficult that I’ll get frustrated by it.  And yet, it isn’t so simple that I feel like I’m not surmounting a challenge.  I can play it for a bit, allow my mind to forget all of my stressful thoughts for a time and feel like I’ve accomplished something.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What do you do when you’re stressed?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #142