The 'Catch-22' Of My Stressed Out Looks. . . !

Hi Everyone! I had the funniest converstaion the other night and it was because I've been feeling yucky these last few months. Lately, it seems like as the day goes on my attitude and my looks go by the wayside, and when it's time to go home I'm cranky and I look like hell!

The second half of the day I seem to spend more time in the bathroom trying to fix my hair, touch up my makeup, and generally adjust my disheveled self so I can go home. I can't figure this out because I love my job, I enjoy my co-workers and my personal life is in great shape. I just think I look terrible lately. I also can't decide if it's my looks that bug me and make me cranky or if I'm cranky because of my looks. This has been going on for about three months now.

My fiance' says I'm stressed out and if I watched a video of myself all day long I would see it. "That's crazy!" I said to him. "I don't think I'm stressed out!" He said I was crazy if I don't think I have stress. I work hard and I love the challenges of my job but I don't look at it like stress and I don't think I'm crazy either. But, to be completely honest, I don't really know what stress or crazy is. My looks have stressed me out lately that's for sure, but could the fact that my looks have given me stress further enhance the reason of my stress. My fiance' burst out laughing and said that I was experiencing my own mental Catch 22. What? I had heard of the phrase but didn't know what it meant.

My fiance explained that a Catch 22 is a challenge of common reasoning. A no win situation of round-about logic and that it comes from the book and movie of the same name. I didn't read the book or see the movie so I had to look it up on Wikipedia. To save you the time, here's what I found out. The basic idea of the phrase comes into play when a character in the book doesn't want to fly any more combat missions because they're dangerous and if a person wants to fly dangerous missions he must be crazy so he goes to the doctor hoping the doctor will call him crazy so he doesn't have to fly anymore dangerous missions. The doctor then explains to him the rule of Catch-22 which prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions;

"Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

OMG! That is so funny and my fiance' explained how the Catch-22 phrase applied to me; If I'm stressed out because of my looks my looks have caused my stress so I must be stressed out which means I also must be crazy. However, If I look good to everyone except me my stress isn't real so therefore I can't be stressed out which means I'm not crazy. He burst out laughing!

It somehow made sense and both of us started laughing about this. He also said he was going to start taking notes on our conversations so he could write a book. From now on I'm not going to worry about this and every time I look in the mirror I'm going to think about this hilarious conversation. Now I want to see the movie!

Lynn
Los Angeles, CA