Lists For My Lists

I get in this funk of a mood about this same time every year. I have come to conclude that it is because of all the chaos and stress and the holidays and school and finals week…wow I guess maybe there is a legitimate reason I am in this downer of a mood. I feel like I am a pretty organized person and even have a day planner to keep my days on track and make sure that everything that needs to get done during the week or that day does! From homework, events, projects, visitors, birthdays, and work it all goes in the little calendar of mine and some days I wonder how I ever survived without one.

Then it comes to finals week for school and I want to curl up and hide in a hole until it’s all over with. I have more finals and projects than ever before this semester and I always thought that my last year in college would be a breeze…HA!…where’d I ever get that from? I thought I had good time management and then all of a sudden everything is due on one day and 24 hours in a day just doesn’t seem long enough anymore. Some days I have lists for my lists of school work to be completed and the best order to complete them.

Then comes the Holidays and figuring out family plans, who you are going to see, where you’re going to spend them, presents you need to buy, food that needs to be cooked, and decorations that need to be hung. And to me it feels like I just took the Christmas tree down last week. I always heard my parents say that as you get older the years seem to fly by and I thought surely that doesn’t really happen…does it? Ohhhh it does!

So I was searching around on MSN one day and found on the side bar that it had an article titled ’31 Sneaky Mood Boosters’ and man did I click on that link as fast as my mouse would move. I thought I would try anything at this point to get back in my cheery mood and not be so stressed out. What I found was that by eating different kinds of food would actually boost your mood. I was a little skeptical at first but the more I read and thought about it, it makes complete sense. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC recently did a test with 156 subjects comparing Zoloft to exercising 3 times a week for 45 minutes. They found that the exercise worked just as well as the drug in treating depression and better than the drug in keeping it from returning. The article also states that regular moderate workouts and a healthy diet also reduce stress, anxiety, and fatigue—three underlying causes of moodiness. One of the tips on there that hit me hard was to cut back on caffeine as it actually makes your body more fatigued. I drink A LOT of coffee every morning as it is the only thing that keeps me going…or so I thought.

A few of the 31 tips included:
· Eating breakfast
· Snacking regularly
· Get moving
· Take vitamins and minerals
· Drink Up – water that is!
· Set your workouts to music

I do some of these things in my daily life already but I am going to try to pick a few new ones, stick with them, and maybe my funky mood will go away.