The Cher Index of Personal Wellbeing

I do have some library things to say and I am working on them, but I have been dealing with some personal stuff this week and can't muster the proper Constructive Summer vibe for you today, so I am taking an audience request (okay, it's a co-blogger request from Erin).

As I mentioned, I use the Cher Index of Personal Well-being to assess my personal well-being. I developed this system quite a while ago and have found it to be useful.  See, I found that there were some external indicators of how I was feeling that I could more easily measure than I was able to assess my current physical, emotional and psychological state directly. Namely: how much Cher have I just been listening to?

You might not have the same tell, but I bet you have a similar tell. Think back on the worst day you had last month. When you were skipping every track, what did you land on? when you threw your hands up, what show did you put on, what book of poetry did you pull out? Something you do when you're not quite right.


At the time, I carried about seven tracks of Cher on my personal listening device, so ranks 1 through 7 were a simple measure of how many of those tracks I had listened to during the previous measurable period of time. One or two or three, you come across a track in the shuffle or you just want to hear a track, but when you start to seek out four or five tracks, things are getting intense. If you shuffle Cher? We're talking something is UP.

I sincerely believe that pain scales have to be on a log scale because it doesn't make sense if they are not. So, when we get up towards ten, we have to pull out some stops to get something to address the level of stress. I looked to videos, and marked 8 with a video of gypsies, tramps and thieves that I had enjoyed on several occasions.

Then a weird thing happened, the Cher Index of Personal Well-being outgrew Cher! Because nine, nine was a video of Dolly Parton's Nine To Five. Let me tell you, when you need Nine To Five, you really need it. And I DARE you to watch this and not be cheered. What is even happening in this video?

10 is something like that video only much more so. So much so that I am embarrassed about what it is. Let's hope we never get to ten.

The great part about the Cher Index of Personal Well-being is that it measures personal well-being while also improving personal well-being.

Well there you go, a peak inside my brain.

How do you keep track of your stress and cope with it?

Keep Rockin'
Rachel