Dealing With Stress -- April 2016

I recently got paid the most wonderful compliment: “You, Craig, do seem to sail through obviously-infuriating levels of shit (often literal) with a Pythonesque élan. It is most admirable.”

We were discussing stress and how I deal with it, and I think we can all agree it has been a very stressful year. Obviously stressful for dairy farmers, of which I am one, but also for families of farmers and all the businesses that rely on the money going around. The pressures are huge, and we’re all making tough decisions in the face of factors beyond our control; be it a lower pay-out, rain during harvest, reduced turnover, or trying to allocate dwindling hours of work amongst your employees.

Often, it’s not these big things that cause us to snap and yell at the staff or the cows, or go home in a bad mood and pick a fight. It’s the little things, the things that shouldn’t have gone wrong because you’re good at your job and know better. The little things that wouldn’t have mattered, possibly even wouldn’t have happened, without that ugly background of things happening beyond our control.

I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t always displayed an admirable “Pythonesque élan”, but I’ve finally found my release valve that lets me laugh at getting kicked by a cow, or copping a load of shit on the head during milking, or even filling the cab of the ute with effluent. I still haven’t learned to laugh at impossibly tangled Rotorainer cables, but surely that can’t be far off.
There’s that moment during milking when you’re distracted, your head filled with impossibly complicated and important management decisions, and you don’t even realise a cow has lifted her tail until it quite literally hits you in the face. Past-Craig would have washed it off and quietly fumed, Present-Craig snaps a picture and tweets it, preferably with a witty heading. And waits. It doesn’t take long for the replies to come back; “trying a new anti-aging face pack?”, “thank God cows don’t fly” and, my favourite “Farmers eh? Shit faced at 6am”

I enjoy making other people laugh, and I don’t mind if it’s at my own expense. I was recently unblocking the effluent spreader and, having finally got it sorted, I called the shed and asked them to switch it on. Too late, I realised I’d parked the ute too close. With the window down. And the door open. It was nothing that couldn’t be sorted with the high pressure hose, but at last count over 7,000 people had seen that picture and presumably laughed at  (hopefully laughed with) the idiot farmer who found himself in that situation.
I share my mistakes for the amusement of others. You might bake, or collect stamps, or hunt, or coach children’s sport. Whatever it is, I can’t encourage you enough to find that release valve that allows you to let off steam. It’s a stressful year, and it’s dangerous to let the pressure build up.