"The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Stress Today"
by John Wilder
"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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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."
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