Stressing about Paper

What do you stress about? Oh, excuse me, about what do you stress?

Obviously, grammar would be one of my answers. Ha.

Lately, though, it’s been very refreshing to realize one simple thing – it is useless to stress over things that are out of my control.

In any given situation, I’m starting to consciously think, “Ok, what can I realistically change here? What do I want to change, or have the right to change?” Turns out that most times it comes down to ME. That’s it. I can’t change what someone says or how someone is acting towards me. What I can do is perhaps choose to leave the situation … or change the way I allow myself to feel and react to it.

In this crazy high-anxiety world, there is a tremendous peace in that.

It used to really stress me out when coworkers didn’t put the whole ream of paper in the printer. The point of a ream of paper is that it’s made to fit perfectly in the printer drawer. Just the right amount of paper. Sure, it looks like too much. But it’s not. Just put the whole damn thing in there, people. I swear to god it will fit. And you’ll be a lot happier because you won’t have an awkward extra bunch of sheets lying around.

That’s a perfect example of how my mind used to work. OCD. Scary. I know.

But now, even though I still support using the full ream, I know that I can’t change the way other people feel about it. What I can do is maybe add the sheets myself, if I feel so inclined. Or I can send out an email to the team enlightening them of my ream knowledge. But if they don’t care, what can I do?

I know reams of paper are not that important. But my other option for an example was “fear of death” and how we shouldn’t stress about dying because we have no control over it and can’t prove one way or another whether it’ll be good or bad. But, it’s a Friday, so I went with the ream thing.