How To Have A Nervous Breakdown in Three Easy Steps

About this time every year, I start hyperventilating and feeling the impending weight of February pressing down upon me. For any American Heart Association employee, February takes on new meaning. It's our Superbowl, our Mardi Gras, our tax season. It's a month long endurance test of sanity, sensible shoes and the number of hours that can be worked in a day while sleeping and eating in proper proportions.

The pressure of February hits me in the face the day I come back from Christmas break. It's a nice long break to allow us all to sleep as much as possible in a two week period.

So 8 years in, I should be used to this by now, right?

Well, each year is different in what needs to be done, what's new for the year and what new position I might be in. This year, for some reason, hit me harder than last.

So with that and other things, here's what I call the Perfect Storm of a Nervous Breakdown:

1. Feel the oppression of hundreds of hours of looming work for three weeks and have it reach crescendo on a day where you have a minute to realize just how much more there still is to do.
2. Have had your friends and/or family visit you and realize just how much you miss them, how life was simpler when you lived near them and wouldn't be great to move back to a place you originally called home? (later realize it is less the geography and always the people that you miss)
3. Pick a fight with your spouse/significant other as to make every place you are in a day completely awkward and hostile with tinges of nostalgia and reflection.

That's it. The holy trinity of mental instability.

I hit that on Wednesday for no reason in particular. It was a bad day. Thankfully, I also had drinks scheduled with my friend Greg. That helped me vent, made me focus on things other than myself and drew me back into the land of the less volatile. . .even if only for a few hours. A cocktail and an entertaining friend. Just enough in most cases to pull me back.