“I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” – 2001: A Space Odyssey
Did anyone else but me notice that they issued red shirts to the crew of the USS Nimitz before they shipped off to the Persian Gulf?
I’ve noticed recently that everyone I come into contact with, even retired folks, is in a state of stress. They act like they’re just one more event away from exploding like a blue-haired GloboLeftist who can’t get gender affirmation care for the unborn baby that she’s getting ready to abort and don’t get her started about Cheeto® Hitler.
Even your correspondent, me, has occasionally had a foggy head and the vague sense I’m exactly one email away from my brain displaying 404.
In 2025, stress isn’t just a feeling—it’s a weapon. Between 24/7 news cycles on CNN® screaming doom to sell you toothpaste (even though we know that nothing ever happens), social media algorithms feeding outrage to increase the amount of time spent on their “platforms”, and a world that expects everyone to hustle like a gerbil on meth, stress seems like it’s planned. It might be.
I left my ADHD prescription in my Ford Fiesta™. The next morning I had a Ford Focus®.
The system loves stressed-out people. Big Pharma® has got a pill for every flavor of freakout—anxiety, insomnia, and that “I’m just not myself” vibe. They make bank on misery, raking in billions with no real incentive to solve the actual underlying issue: A clear-headed patient isn’t good for business. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy—just a system that profits when we’re down.
Don’t get me wrong: meds have their place for some folks, but slapping a prescription on stress is like putting a Band-Aid™ on a Kennedy. Stress is a bully, and I’ve never beaten a bully by giving in. Sometimes I need an overly elaborate scheme involving marbles and a parade float.
Why Stress Wins (and Why It Doesn’t Have To)
Stress isn’t just a bad day—it’s a parasite that eats what modern chaos does to people. It’s the ding of a work email at midnight, the headline about the next apocalypse, or the coworker who passive-aggressively “just needs one more thing.” Stress multiplies the events, making a minor blip in a day into spittle-inducing ragebait.
But I guess she was plagiarizing herself. Same spit, different day.
But there good news: stress only wins if I let it. I can’t erase it—life’s messy, but I get to choose how to fight. These following strategies are my weapons. They’re simple, mostly free, and don’t come with a side effect of “may cause existential dread” like the relationship I had with my ex-wife.
- Get Outside: Touch Grass
Getting time where I am physically away from anything but reality is nice. I can go to my backyard, nearby Mirkwood Forest, or even just sitting in my hot tub with a stogie staring at the night sky. Something about trees, fresh air, and dirt reorients us. We have spent most of history outside, and I think that is why camping is popular – it’s simplification of life and removal from the everyday experience.
Action: Go out and hit the hot tub with a Macanudo®. Or, walk outside for 20 minutes daily, no phone. Bonus points if I spot a meteor or a squirrel riding a rottweiler.
Do yourself a favor and don’t do a Google™ search on that.
- Meditation and Prayer
Meditation and prayer sounds like it’s for hippies in hemp pants and hemp shirts using hemp toilet paper and smoking hemp (they’d pray to a bong if it had Wi-Fi), but, for me, it’s just calming down and tuning out the buzz of thoughts that I’ve got going in the background. Often as I’m going to sleep, I relax, focus on my breath, and pray – often the Lord’s Prayer. Or I count backwards from 500.
Results? Five minutes of quiet breathing before bed, and I felt like I’d hacked my own head. No candles, no chanting, no sweaty Asian country with cheap heroin. Nope. Just me telling my worries to shut up.
Action: Five minutes of focused breathing tonight. Unless I fall asleep first.
- Laugh It Off
Laughter is universal in its ability to erase stress. For me, writing this blog and prepping these memes and jokes often makes me laugh out loud. It’s fun.
Action: Find something funny. Laugh. Daily. Many people think watching an actress pretending to be an old lady falling down is funny. My weakness is that because I spend so much time on humor is that for me to find it funny it has to be a real old lady falling.
I always say that it’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get back up, but the cop said, “That’s not the way field sobriety tests work.”
- Move Your Body
Stress loves inactivity. Doing anything physical is a good start. Lifting weights. Cleaning the living room. Hitting the elliptical trainer. If it gets my blood moving faster than just sitting there on the couch, it works. No gym membership needed.
Action: Do 15 minutes of anything. Make it fun, not a chore.
- Write It Down
Why do I write? Well, for one reason is to eliminate stress. I rarely ever feel stress when I write. It’s an activity that, for me, gets my mind focused and flowing so that I can put the right words down on paper the screen. YMMV, but if you try, remember: nobody’s grading your grammar. Burn the page if you want; it’s your call.
Action: Write for five minutes. About whatever.
What’s Hillary’s favorite question? “How much to just make this go away?”
That’s it. That’s what I do. Most people think I’m fairly chill, and find it odd that I don’t panic about things. Frankly, for me there aren’t that many things that do cause me to panic because I buy cigars in bulk and generally have a six-month supply on hand.
I mean, what else is there to stress out about? It’s not like I have blue hair.
I was surprised to hear how many college kids now get professional counseling on a regular basis for anxiety. My step-daughter and most of her friends were…… and coworkers have confirmed the same with their kids as well.
This seems odd as these kids are on social media all the time, so it would seem natural to form a mutual support group to help each other out talk things out. But then it hit me, that most have anxiety precisely because they don’t know how to communicate with each other.
Social media has made everything very superficial while overtaxing dopamine in the chase for online approval. I think the only way this reverses course if by getting smart phones out of schools so these kids are allowed to develop proper social connections.
J Bird
When you’re taught that the world is on fire and words are violence, it stands to reason.
The counseling is not good – I’ve never seen it get people better.
Now Foods brand kava kava helps with anxiety. Better that than the countless opioids floating around.
I’ll bet – but I’ve not had it.
Stress is quite literally lethal. People are living longer than ever but can anyone say they are living better than ever? Most people look like they are one bad day from snapping.
Cortisol is a hormone released during stress. Good for when getting chased by a saber-toothed sloth, but when you are constantly under stress it has a lot of really bad health effects. The symptoms of which coincide with what some Leftists suffer from. Wasted arm and leg muscles, fat core, fat hump at the middle top of the back, impaired learning but increased ‘flashbulb’ memory of stress events, facial swelling and bloating.
Stress is also addictive; people need to get that hit of outrage and fear.
That’s what I’ve seen. Lots of tension.
“Field sobriety test”. I laughed out loud. Thanks for that.
You had a lot of commentary today on pills. Reality check, that’s what CNN actually sells to the oldsters who watch it, not toothpaste…but not for long?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/17/media/drug-ads-broadcasters-rfk
Chill pills like Xanax are not the answer. In addition to your great advice of “enjoy nature/meditate/laugh/move/write”, I have one more to add:
Unplug.
https://www.verywellmind.com/nomophobia-the-fear-of-being-without-your-phone-4781725
I avoid pills at all costs, except for a few vitamins.
What??? No “Help Me, I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up!!!”
My take is that if you let things fall into place, no need for stress. But, everyone needs to have some sense of “urgency” to address important daily issues that arise. If you don’t, then stress smacks you in the face.
Gardening is my soothing influence. Everyone should have one activity to indulge. Or two. Tito’s with club soda & lime is my second.
I enjoy gardening except for the damned weeds which tend to stress me out because they won’t go away. I hadn’t thought about drinking Tito’s while gardening but sounds like a good idea. Not sure if combining the two is what you meant, but my mind immediately went there when I read your post 🙂
Still need both hands to pull the weeds, but I think I still have my old Camel-bak backpack around here somewhere. It should hold a full pitcher of Tito margaritas.
I’m actually looking forward to pulling weeds now.
J-bird
And I’m looking forward to that stogie . . .
Ditto. We’re all here, and the Sun came up again. That’s 90% of life.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Based Book Sale has returned, including three stories of my own: The Mayor of Christ Mountain, Led by a Star and Even Legends Bleed.
There’s also a short story by a friend of mine, The Advisor and the Matriarch.
There are over 300 other titles as well by independent authors, all 99₵ or free. Go check it out.
https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/the-2025-summer-based-book-sale
Hurrah!
My ex-wife was fond of saying that I was so calm that if I were any more relaxed, I’d be comatose. She wasn’t entirely bad. She just didn’t think that she was as good as she thought she needed to be, and misery does not actually love company. Nor does company love misery. RIP SKD.
Lathechuck
I’m normally pretty chill. But some weeks . . .
Re: Get Outside. Sage advice, yes, but no mention of sunshine? Nothing lifts my mood faster than stepping out of the house on a sunny day. Without the damned sunscreen (read A Midwestern Doctor – the sun/cancer connection is grossly overblown).
Oh, and while out there in the sunshine, pull a ripe tomato off the vine and eat it. The late, great Lewis Grizzard said it best. “It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.”
MG
I like sunshine, but on a cool day. Not fond of hot days.
John that was in your top ten.
Hat Tip
Thank you!