Therapeutic driving

To escape all the recent stress my husband and I have been going through lately, we decided to visit my family who lives 100 miles away. What I didn’t know was this trip would temporarily alter my stress level.

My stress level has not only been through the roof, but it has been higher than the part on a mountain where the trees don’t grow anymore. Wait wait, I think that’s too low. I think my stress has been right about where O’Ryan’s belt constellation is located. That sounds about right.

Moving on….

My husband and I decided I would drive to our destination and he would drive us home. As soon as we were about 10 miles outside of Kearney, I rolled down all the windows in the car (granted we are on the highway and it was a chilly 40 degrees and my husband had a terrible cold so he was none too happy). As far as I could see there were corn fields and cows and your occasional horse chopping on frozen grass. Talk about stress relief! I never knew these familiar sights of my past would grant me so much relief.

As we headed closer to our destination my stress level was about as high as my knee. It was like my stress was just floating out of the car windows and filling up the beautiful sandhill valleys of Nebraska.

We enjoyed our day trip immensely, never once mentioning the words ‘lay off’ or ‘Baldwin Filters.’ I had to laugh because as we were getting closer and closer to Kearney, my stress level started getting higher again. But this time, it only rose as high as the roof over my head.

I’m sure in the next couple of days my stress will be back to where it was originally, in O’Ryan’s belt constellation. However, had we not taken that day trip I’m pretty sure I would have had to be put in a mental institution.

So the next time YOUR stress accumulates so much you think you are going to explode, go somewhere. Get out of town; get away from the situation that is stressing you. I assure you, it will work and you will be good as new (or at least slightly new with a few dents).