A great source of stress for any man is the workplace, the service, where he willy-nilly has to go to earn his daily bread or Easter cake. But I believe that there are some people who are much more stressed and busier than the ordinary state or private employees, and these are none other than those involved in their own projects. No one works harder than them. Whether you’re the owner of a company, you’ve started building your own house, fence or an annex, or remodeling your yard, surely no one is busier than you. You, the toiler, pull the yoke the hardest of all.
You wake up with the night in your head after struggling in bed thinking of solutions for the next day’s work, you eat on the run, you dress carelessly, you do everything in a great hurry to resume the work from where you left it as quickly as possible A day ago. Because it’s yours, it’s your idea, your work, your project. Everything depends on you and only you, and that is worth every effort. Even weekends or holidays don’t seem to work for you because they keep you away from achieving your goal.
If a normal employee wakes up every morning the same way he woke up in the previous ones, drinks his coffee quietly and goes to work where he only does what he has to do, which is what is written in the job description, or sometimes what not to admit, and something more, at the end of the 8 hours having the opportunity to return home relieved, without regrets, without other thoughts, the master in you does not act like that at all. Time doesn’t pass, it flies, and you can’t believe when another day has passed. You are able to stay for hours over the “program” to fix some details or to admire what you have done so far. Because it’s yours. And you don’t take a shower. Your family is waiting for you for the holidays, but you want to stay at work.
And it’s not stress, it’s passion. Stress only occurs when there’s a contradiction between what you want to do and what you have to do, and that doesn’t happen when you’re your own boss because you’re in exactly the right place at the right time. But at work it’s different, you’re in a place where you wouldn’t want to be and you’re doing something that doesn’t represent you most of the time. Hence the stress.
Let’s take the most recent example from everyday life, it is about our housewives completely caught up in Easter affairs. Did you have anyone to talk to in the weeks before? I do not believe. Because not one, but several projects were underway at the same time, all private, self-financed, with deadlineclear things, budget, employees and all the cutlery, of which I mention only two, the most important: General cleaning of the house and Preparation of Holiday Meals.
All these patrons had common passions. Could anyone get in their way? Nooo!! Did they complain that they have a lot of work and are tired every day? Yeah. Did anyone want to quit or give the job to someone else? Nooooo. And many were on leave or even retired, but they couldn’t see their head anymore. There’s a paradox there, clearly. How to be on vacation or retired but be so busy? Well, it’s simple, because you’re doing your own thing, and when that happens, it’s a lot worse than when you have a job full timemuch worse.
In the days and weeks before Easter, you couldn’t find a single married woman who was cheerful, relaxed, peaceful. None of them liked jokes about her, none of them wanted anything more than fulfillment target– that he set for that day/week.
You go to the market, turn the whole house upside down, wipe the smallest corner of dust, rearrange the furniture, change all the linens, do all the laundry, etc. What company could expect its employees to do this in such a short time ? None. It would be an abuse to exploit the staff in that hall, there are big fines for such a thing. But this does not apply to private projects, the ITM does not get involved. It’s obvious: your fiercest and most merciless boss is none other than you. Only you are capable of whipping yourself to exhaustion for your plans. No one from outside.
And it’s not just 8 hours of work, by any means. Most of the time they easily exceed 10 hours a day. A self-respecting housewife works from 6 in the morning until 9, 10 in the evening. After everyone in the house has gone to bed she still scrubs at a stain on the furniture that can be seen by an Easter visitor, and that would be a personal offense to her, a great shame, a catastrophe.
Arguments are the order of the day because the other family members do not understand why there is so much involvement for such trivial things. It’s like what big mess does this woman do other than cleaning? Why is there such a fuss about cleanliness? What, you can’t live without cleanliness? Well, yes. That’s the attitude for which your housemate can send a pan fixed to your head. No one understands her project, its vital importance for which it is worth any sacrifice… And, worse, no one notices it. The dust and dirt she collected makes almost no difference in the house, an untrained eye will never notice the change. Maybe only if some things have changed structurally, but otherwise nothing.
And the same with food. The recipes fly around the house like flyers. Everything must be done according to tradition, and if you don’t eat cozonac, drob, sarmale, fixed lamb roast and Easter Passover, it’s sad, you’d better put a noose around your neck. Hundreds of thousands of Romanians come in droves from overseas and countries to put into them what you get for free and you are not able to appreciate it?! Shame! Days of 12 hours of work each dedicated to a table full of dishes from which many eat and are not able to even shake hands for the meal?! Not to mention that some of these young and hot people don’t even look at the drob. Hear! He prefers pizza!!! I know!
No wonder you need three days of rest after something like that. Too bad there are never that many because work has to start, the other…
Briscan Zara is a writer and publicist
