Nearly every morning, I do a round of the park before I start work. I walk quickly, heart pumping, the weather waking me up, the pavement hammering order into my mind at the beginning of the day.
Invariably, I phone a friend once I feel awake enough for a chat, and we both open the conversation by asking one another ‘how are you?’, to which the answer is always without fail ’so stressed because…’. The because doesn’t matter; so many reasons for stress have been given that it wouldn’t be worth even beginning to list them. It comes from everywhere. Stressed because of our jobs. Stressed because of our partners, or lack thereof. Stressed because of the government, because of the horror on the news, because everything is so damn expensive.
