No thin red line

I find that there are only very short periods of time in which I am not stressed out anything something or other. I'm trying quite hard to remember a time when I could go more than perhaps three days without stress of some kind. Maybe the trip to Florida is the exception, because I don't believe I had any stress while I was down there, aside from the worrying about Missy. But there certainly wasn't any stress over work, school, money, or family, and those are the big things that bother me most of the time.

Right now I find myself freaking out over how we're going to afford our wedding, which is funny, because my careful budgeting brought us in at $15,000 less than the average cost of a wedding for our area. So why is it still hard? Because it's still $10,000, which isn't exactly a small number. Of course it's not like we have to come up with a huge lump sum at once, but my dream dress will be gone if I don't buy it soon, so there's $500 in the near future. Also, our wedding venue books up very fast, and we blocked it, but as soon as someone else expresses interest in that date we'll need to make a down payment fast to keep it. There's another $400.

And then there's the financial situation with the apartment, and buying essential furniture, and food, and the moving process for both of us.

And then there's finishing up this semester successfully and then working for the summer.

I'm a stressed person. It's in my nature, because I'm inherently intense and passionate. But everyone has stress, and not everyone deals with it the same way. I'd like to learn how to deal with my stress differently, without changing who I am, because without my identity I am and have nothing. I wish there was a neat little line drawn between behaviors and personality, so I could know where to make my changes.