A Rant on Stress

Mornings with tea aren't as private or charming as they used to be. Everyday there is an anticipation of stress. When I started my PhD program, I was lonely and miserable. But in the mornings, I would have my tea, and I would play out many possibilities for the future. It made me happy, briefly.
Now I plan for the day, I try to think of what is realistically possible, of the things I definitely need to be done with for the day. It is a bland colorless process. The hope is that this mental place I am at is a temporary phenomenon, that once we have jobs, and are free from the clutches of the program, we will be our own bosses.

But I suspect that this is also a function of the human social life cycle. We will increasingly have to take on chunkier responsibilities: house, children etc., all pretty expensive. I think the house part will be fun. Children, thats a 50-50, money-wise a complete drain, but people seem very keen on it for the emotional rewards.

There is also the strain of working as a team. It is in many ways a lot more strenuous than working alone, especially when it involves every single aspect of your life, who did whom what favors and made what compromises is easily forgotten and is the subject of many a bickerings. Working alone, I know exactly what I want, what risks I am willing to take, and most importantly I get to act on it. In a team, I have to put in all my effort towards a half-wanted goal. I can also half-ass it, and pretend to be outraged when the other person calls me out. It is tempting to bluff, I can tell myself I know better, the other persons ideas are all just..pff..irrational. I can have selective blindness, hearing loss, loss of memory, my unconscious mind can pick and choose the ailment. Even with the best of efforts and cleanest of intentions, if we don't take the chance to enjoy each others company when we can, things can get real murky, so being a sly ass on top of it, as much as the unconscious mind encourages it, is pretty suicidal. And then, what if life doesn't even offer that breather of an opportunity for unadulterated companionship? Then maybe we are taking on more than we can.