who knew?

Sundays at Meg and Phillip's are always great. In addition to yummy waffles and relaxed, lazy-Sunday company, there's the benefit of PBS specials. And today's was totally fascinating.

Stress: Portrait of a Killer confirmed a lot of the things I've been saying about the reasons I've been generally miserable over the past year. The thing I really didn't know, although I knew it was one of the reasons I was unhappy, had to do with stratification and hierarchy in the workplace/society in general. Subordinates suffer greater amounts of stress, and correspondingly greater health risks and problems.

I don't think it's an accident that my depression kicked back into full gear when I took up my development position at the Center, where competition for hierarchical privilege was vicious. Nor was it an accident that my migraines developed, for the first time, in my job as a secretary -- second lowest on the office totem pole. For a long time the work itself was interesting, and that kept me fairly happy; but after two years with no ladders to climb and plenty of ambition, the stress spiked astronomically and my health -- physical and psychological -- deteriorated.

Crazy. One of the conclusions reached by the main researcher consulted in the special -- who has done work on hormones, DNA and cellular changes in the stress levels of baboons for the past thirty years -- is that social connection alleviates and offsets stress, and prolongs life. One of my biggest complaints over the past year -- I know I've said it over and over and over -- is isolation. It's been offset a little by Meg and Phillip, and the dear people with whom I speak long distance over the phone, but the physical isolation was the real killer. The happy, connected, unstressed baboons weren't calling to each other from treetop to treetop; they were sitting side by side, grooming each other.

These are reasons why I'm glad to be going back home, and glad for something new. Also glad, finally, to have decided on a course of action for my future, one that will, I believe, be reasonably fulfilling, until I can totally support myself by writing. (This is, always and ever, the dream. A life spent doing whatever I want, paid amply by my favorite pastime. Adventure! Excitement! New places! Exploration! Or just days spent lounging around at home, or walking in the woods, or concocting a feast, or reading, or whatever, with nothing but the Real calling any shots on my life and the spending of my time.)

I'm tired, so this isn't as in-depth or intelligent as I'd like, but the special was deeply interesting. I'd love to purchase the DVD (but not, of course, until my financial situation is settled -- i.e. I have a job back in Erie).