Bad day? How do you unwind?
 

We've all had them and I'd wager most of us have a routine or thing to take the edge off.

Hot bath? Chain smoking luckies while pounding case after case of cheap beer? Tea? Prostitutes? Double fisting bacon wrapped donuts while quietly sobbing over your diary? Scream at random people on the street? Lighting shit on fire? <--- oh stop we've all done it

So lets hear em. How do you keep from letting a bad day fester into a blinding rage of cussing, fists and spit directed at anybody unfortunate enough to be within 20 feet of you?

Personally I love to drive. Sure it might sound dangerous getting behind the wheel carrying the rage of a 1000 demons in your gut but after and hour or two of aimless driving, thinking and some good music life doesn't seem too bad anymore.

What else works for you folks?

Who lights things on fire? That's just silly.

Me? Motorcycle. You can't be preoccupied and keep the bike upright, so you quickly forget your troubles. Turns out physics always defeats a bad mood. Does wonders for me when I've had a bad day. I'll hop on and do a triangle out west and come back trying to remember why I was cranky. I don't listen to music while I ride because I figure it's a bad habit even though I can't hear too much with my pipes and the half helmet, but I bet that'd be awesome.

Rough sex works if doesn't involve the person you're pissed at (assuming it's a person in the first place).

Exercise works assuming I can get myself in the mood to do it while irked. Sparring. Running. Lifting.

Booze is good cure-all too. Nothing like running 6 miles drunk to take your mind off your troubles.

Video games.

It's essentially killing people in your mind.

There are two kinds of people in the world Plan, those who admit to lighting things on fire and those who lie about it. Actually have you ever had angry sex with the person you're fighting with? MY GOD no piece of furniture is safe.

BG I used to love coming home, loading up GTA and just randomly shooting people for about an hour while yelling out obscenities that haven't been invented yet. Great stress reliever.

I work from home. The people I'm usually pissed off at are well out of earshot. Yelling profanities at them does help, however.

That's awesome spindles, I do the same thing...although I fear my neighbors probably think I have tourettes or something.

When I am having a bad day, I usually run 2-3 miles and use my anger to run faster.

You can't control other people's actions, you can only control your reactions to them. Ask yourself: is my anger useful? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. My car was totalled a couple of months ago. I was holding onto my anger at the guy who rear-ended me, and that was interfering with my search for a new car, because I was still focusing on how unfair it was that I had to go through the process. This was not useful anger.

My best release for a bad day is a good book, one that I've read before and love. I can drop into that familiar universe created by the book and lose myself.

Pfft. I used to get paid to light things on fire. It was my job, nothing random about it.

This. The point of this thread would be the reactions that blow off steam without destroying furniture or getting you fired for "speaking your mind."

I used to save it all up on a binge weekend.

Now, I meditate to let it all go.

My boyfriend gets to hear it all if I have a bad day. He draws a bath for me with a glass of wine in my favorite glass and lights a bath and body works candle for me. Then places both on the edge of the tub waiting until I get home. :)

Exercise and video games, especially FPS games. What makes my bad day go away is totally kicking my SO's ass at Perfect Dark (yeah, we're old school).

Video games, cooking, and sometimes ranting. Sometimes I just got to get things off my chest and yell at something. I also like to cook when I'm stressed. Something about cooking takes my mind off of the day and on to making good food.

Drinking, drinking helps a lot.

It is difficult for me to unwind from a stressful work day because of the kids. Sometimes, taking care of them and playing with them actually helps because it takes my mind off of work. When that does not help, after they go to bed I have a glass of wine, read a book, and go to sleep.

Taking shots of Captain Morgan really helps on the days I don't have the kids. :D

You know, I've never thought about that. I love riding, especially after a stressful day.. but I never really articulated this reason. It's so true. You can't do everything you need to in order to not die (scan, watch for idiots in their boxes, come to a stop and put your feet down, even lean considerably into a corner) with any other thought preoccupying your mind. I've definitely come home from a ride totally ..blank, in a good way.

Other than that, the destress I always use (because it works everytime) is video games. I'm ridiculously good at games of all genres, so its always an ego boost to trounce the newbs, and that's exactly what I need to stop stressing.

Smoking + Writing. I never write anything of real significance. I just write whatever I feel like writing. Lately it's been jokes.

But see you admitted it so my theory still stands :D In all seriousness though sitting around a roaring fire can be quite relaxing as long as it wasn't started on somebodies couch.

SO lots of drinking, video games and exercise? Maybe the the ultimate way to relax after a bad day is to drink a bottle of rum and play Dance Dance revolution for few hours? Sure you might look like a jerk but, my god, how much fun especially for those watching.

I actually agree with you Meditrina, once in awhile I'll wind up looking after my two young nieces for an odd afternoon and chasing them around the back yard for a few hours really does help blow off steam. All that laughing and running and everything...how can you be angry after that? Of course it helps that I can just leave afterwards and my brother can deal with two very wound up kids.

One of my favorite things to do when I'm pissed is to hit the batting cages. Unfortunately, there aren't any batting cages here :(

Really, pretty much anything physical works. Working out, sex, dancing... drinking rum and playing DDR would be pretty awesome, now that you mention it :D

If my bad day is more along the lines of "I'm tired and feel inadequate," then just sitting quietly outside with my thoughts and my cigarettes does wonders. When I lived at home, there was a maple tree I loved to climb nearly to the top, and I'd just sit there for a couple hours, thinking and daydreaming. Being somewhere in the woods and/or next to water helps, too.

Have a drink, surf the net, watch mindless tv, cuddle with boyfriend, or play (get poked with needles, get ass beat on, whatever BDSM activities we can do), just depends on what has caused the anger and if boyfriend is available or not.

Thats really funny CG, I used to love hitting the batting cages too and not even for a bad day just because it was fun. I haven't done that in years though but know that you've mentioned it I think I need to go find one.

Does anybody here like to just get away? A cabin in the woods? A resort? A weekend on the beach? One of my favs was heading out for a weekend to my grandfathers hunting cabin, it was 50 miles from the nearest town with no electricity or running water. The kitchen had one of those old fashioned hand pumps over the sink, you had to use an outhouse and of course chopping wood to keep warm burned off a lot pent up frustration. By Monday morning you'd pretty much forgotten why you were ever upset in the first place.

Some family friends used to have a cabin near Lake Cumberland when I was a kid. Weekend trips were highlights of my summer. It was a 20-30 minute drive into the nearest town, but took only a minute to walk down the path to the dock. We'd either swim off the dock (which had the bounciest diving board ever) or go tubing on the lake (and when I got older, wakeboarding and skiing.) My parents were always more relaxed on our weekend/sometimes week-long trips (which, looking back, is kind of surprising. My brother and I got up to all kinds of shenanigans when we were down there), and that's something I look forward to doing once I'm a little older and have the money to afford a boat.

Ooh, and just straight-up camping. With a tent. That's always a great time.

Indeed, a tent and a campfire on some ridge with a great view and an open night sky, what could be better?

I've never been to a batting cage. I thought they were just a movie plot device to make your protagonist seem like the everyman. I'd love to see one in person some day..

Exercise always helps. A lot. A long bike ride, a long run.. getting outdoors and out of my head for a while helps immensely.

Also, staring at the sky or watching the water in a river or the creek. Nothing really gives me perspective quite like that. Watching the clouds slowly move across the sky is calming and really gets me thinking about the bigger picture, rather than whatever was bugging me.

http://www.kartsandcages.com/images/...ting-cages.jpg

They don't seem to be as common now as they used to be but you can usually find them at any place you might find game and such (fun parks, amusement parks, rec centers ect). It is a lot a fun to to just pound on fast balls for an hour. :thumbsup:

I have 3 things I do, depending on the flavor of bad day:

- I clean the fuck out of the house. If I can't put my life in order, at least I can put my stuff in order.

- For anxiety I exercise like mad, usually riding my exercise bike as hard as I can.

- There's a creek in a grassy park that's really just an empty field at the bottom of the hill a block away. I walk barefoot through the grass and then stick my feet in the creek and let the water wash over them. Nothing like it for just washing the stress away.

...

We have a camping trip that we're in the process of organizing for the weekend before our wedding. I am REALLY looking forward to it. We're going to one of my favorite places. There's a lake, and alpine meadows, and a small beach. And lots of toadlets.

lurkette I love wading around in a stream, its...well I'm not sure but its really relaxing. The best? A babbling brook with a mossy patch or two on the shore under a canopy of trees, when you're done wading around head on over and take a nap on the moss...orgasmic!

snowy I really miss doing that, do you camp right down by the water? I used to have a little cabin I used in Northern Maine that sat right on the water front...only cabin on the lake too...I used to love sitting by that lake, loons calling, dim glow of a campfire, looking up at brilliant stars...smores and fresh lake trout. HOT DAMN. Enjoy it. WTF are toadlets by the way? :D

Just saying "toadlets" seems to work for me.

Toadlets. Toadlets toadlets toadlets. Hm. Not bad!

Toadlets are baby toads. Western toad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Seriously, at this lake they are so thick that you have to be very, very careful on the trail around the lake, because the northwest end of the lake is toadlet territory.

http://i873.photobucket.com/albums/a...acation125.jpg

Oh yeah I've seen those things, I've just never heard them called toadlets before. But know that I'm in the know, I think I'll start using it. :thumbsup:

so most recently, it was crying in the bathtub, primal screams, and pounding on the tub wall.

Toadlets.

toadlets.

Thats how I tend to handle a bad day as well :thumbsup:

Toadlets

Depends on what type of bad day I had.

Hot bath, candles, glass of red wine or a beer, and a book.
A really good cry or scream... or both.
A big bowl of pho and a scary movie.
Talking with S about frustrations and he usually makes me do something for distraction.
Sex.
Hot shower and then laying under a cool fan to reset my system.
Disco nap.

I loved going to the beach and laying under the hot sun until my whole body melted. But, the dermatologist says, no.
I also love when we go camping and I can stare at the river or at the campfire and totally go mindless for awhile. And becoming lost in good fiction is perfect for de-stressing, as long as I can focus on it.

Good list noodle...but I'm confused:

1) Pho?
2) Disco Nap?

Add in toadlets and I'm getting a fantastic vocabulary lesson here. :D

Anyway yeah starring blindly at a fire is just a wonderfully hypnotic way to de-stress your mind, good call.

Pho is vietnamese noodle soup. It's restorative properties are amazing.
And a disco nap is the short, intense nap that you take in the late afternoon/early evening before you go out and party. ;)

However, neither involve toadlets. Unless you want to share your pho with them.