Hey gang,
I realize I'm still on orange (bad) tonight, but I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights and so today I was basically on autopilot almost all the time.
But it's been a really important week for clues.  I've been working with a couple of friends (you know who you are) here over the last week and a half (roughly) regarding issues I've been having with my stress, and over the last 36 hours the problems I've had are finally coming clear.
Apparently, two very major things were wrong with the ways I've tried to cope before: I didn't have enough ways to cope available, and much more important, I was using the wrong things consistently trying to make them work.  This puts that dreadful puzzle addiction incident into an entirely different light...although I really have to say I'll probably never do those the way I used to again.
Now comes the interesting part...finding what would work for me.  But I have leads there too...and really, I have...I wouldn't call it a motivation, I'd call it more of a need personally...to put the stress issues under some kind of control before the fall semester starts for me in just over four weeks.
Time to start experimenting, I guess.