Aaaahhh, freak out!

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I come from a long line of worriers. They had a lot to worry them. Many fled poverty in Europe, working hard in America to be Americans, pushing back the fear of famine and freeze with every push of a mop or swing of a hammer. Fathers died too young, leaving their families in disarray and terror. The national economy tanked. World Wars broke out. Recessions, depressions, lost babies, feuds, failed businesses. Worry, worry, worry.

And people say, stop worrying. It's bad.

Okay! 

Actually, I agree that I should. When people say worrying is your mind pretending to solve a problem without actually doing anything, like expecting to walk to Pittsburgh on a treadmill, I say: Yep! When they say worry is worshipping the problem, I say: Right you are. When they say worry is just fear hiding just out of reach so you can't attack it with courage, I say: You betcha! When they say worry is a tool of the devil, I say: Amen!

And I still don't know how to stop worrying. 

Maybe the problem is that worry does feel like you're doing something. It certainly has one redeeming quality, in that it is motivational. Only an idiot wants to be the grasshopper: 

One fine day in winter some Ants were busy drying their store of corn, which had got rather damp during a long spell of rain. Presently up came a Grasshopper and begged them to spare her a few grains, "For," she said, "I'm simply starving." The Ants stopped work for a moment, though this was against their principles. "May we ask," said they, "what you were doing with yourself all last summer? Why didn't you collect a store of food for the winter?" "The fact is," replied the Grasshopper, "I was so busy singing that I hadn't the time." "If you spent the summer singing," replied the Ants, "you can't do better than spend the winter dancing." And they chuckled and went on with their work.

Aye, aye, Aesop. 

Also: Ants are jerks, but we all know that.

The problem is, worry has no internal stopping mechanism. Once you engage the worry, there's always something it can find to act upon. That's where I run into trouble. Everything may be looking rosy, but there's always some possibility you can dread, and if all else fails there's death and taxes. 

Alcohol used to be a good solution, but it ended up causing even more worries. So now I just have to find a healthier means of dealing with it.

When they say: If you're gonna worry, why pray? If you're gonna pray, why worry? And I say: 

Well, I say, you're right. But it'll always be like a second language to me, because my people were worrier kings from ancient times. 😨😱👑

Two kinds.

I've often agreed with the statement that there are morning people and night people, and I've added that they tend to marry each other. Certainly that's the case at the House of the Keys. I'm the lark, she's the owl. And I've gone on to say that this is probably the only case where evolutionary psychology could make a point, that it's useful for larks and owls to marry because it means someone is always watching out for the saber-toothed tiger attack.

Another way to divide people -- which is what the Internet is all about -- is into food reactions to crises. Some people can't eat anything at all when there's a terrible crisis looming in the family. Others can't get enough calories. Both are reasonable reactions to a dangerous situation. Don't eat, move! Or: Eat fast for energy! And again, I think these kinds of people marry each other. Not sure if larks tend to be the eaters, but that fits us. Up early! Breakfast! Most important meal! When someone dies or is very sick or something, my wife can go for days on coffee and a single granola bar.

Of course, there may be other types, like people who ignore disasters, but they don't work into my analysis. 

"This is fine."

When the looming disaster strikes, though, I lose my appetite and she slowly starts to regain hers. 

I'll be working these observations into my biblical analysis, "Running on a Flat Bread: Fleeing Egypt on an Empty Stomach," to be run in the Journal of Unhelpful Historical Studies. 

All this is leading up to an announcement: I must take a short break from the blog, just over the weekend, to deal with a serious issue that has popped up. You can tell it's serious because I'm eating like a pig and my wife has had one granola bar. 

I'll fill you in on the details then, but we're just praying for the best possible outcome at this point. Wish us luck, as we wish for you always. See you Monday.

Snowfall on Sunday, crapfall on Monday.

Sunday night was rather peaceful. I was out for a while with the dogs, and it was snowing, and after they played around and did various and sundry, the three of us sat on the porch. No one was around. It wasn't too cold. It was dark, the white flakes scattering the light everywhere, so quiet and at ease. 

I of course was too worried about things to enjoy it. I'm not the kind of person who finds peace in nature. If I'm completely bollixed up internally, you could put me on a resort island and all I'd think about was the sunburn I was doomed to get and who's breaking into my house while I'm here.

Monday morning the snow had stopped and it was still very pleasant. 

As nice as winter can be, really. The snow only amounted to a couple of inches; warming was due so no need to shovel. And I still was going nuts. 

Why? Money, mainly; why else? Even my new Batman sticky notes couldn't help me out of this jam. Being a freelance editor means surviving on a multitude of small payments, but publishers don't mind if they pay you late. It bothers them not in the least. They can relax and take it easy over the holiday season. However, my utility companies and credit card issuers and mortgage company have a thing about it. It makes them antsy. Furthermore, I faced my desk Monday with no assignments. I'd worked over the holidays to get things done on deadline -- in one case, as it turned out, the publisher who had to have a book in by December 30 hasn't even downloaded the transfer yet. Which means my invoice hasn't been downloaded, either. And no one has been generating anything for me to work on when I need the dough the most. 

Normally this is not so bad, but with last year's furloughs and medical bills it is quite a bit bad right now. Plus, I have a tax bill due on the 15th! Hooray!

On top of that, a guy rings the doorbell Monday morning and scares the hell out of the dogs. He is standing on the walkway and there are several trucks on the street. He says nothing about his purpose, but I know what it is: These are the men come to lay new cable for the phone company, which is tired of being irrelevant and wants to become a rival to the cable company. This will mean ripping up my front lawn along the sidewalk. I knew the job was going to happen but was given no warning that it would start this week, let alone Monday.

"You have electric dog?" he asks. 

English is not his first language. It may not be his third or fourth.

Electric... what?

After some gesticulating it gets through my pre-coffee mind that he wants to know if we have an electric dog fence. I start to explain that we do, but that the guy who installed it gave big dog Tralfaz a hotspot while shaving his neck, and my wife was disturbed by the fact that junior dog Nipper would just keep ignoring the warning sound from the collar despite the training and getting shocked, and... So yes, we do, but we're not using right now. Sorry.

"Okay," and off he goes. No word on whether they're going to be careful or just chop the circuit line to pieces.

The highlight of the day was rushing out to the mailbox to see if the USPS had delivered some nice, fat checks. They did not. They delivered nothing. I suspect the mailman looked at the crew working on the street and said, "Oh, well, too much trouble to get through that," and drove away. 

I don't want to be mean, though. He may have just had a hangover and called in sick.

Thus, soft white snow, hard dark mood. Hoping for a shinier day Tuesday. Hope your year is off to a better start.

3:30.

Hmmph? What time... 3:30? Plenty more sleep time. Just lay back, close
your eyes, meditate, relax.... Think pleasant thoughts...

That's it. Just be calm, don't focus on anything, certainly not anything
negative... Nothing bad or upsetting, definitely not that that one thing.... You
know, that one thing in your life you can't fix, that's got you so upset?
Yes, just don't think of that, whatever you do.... Put it far from your
mind.... Just, whatever you do, don't think about that

ONE. THING.

Nervosaurus rex.

We're all a little jumpy now. Citizens against citizens. Lunatics shooting up concerts. Nuts shooting at Congressional ball games. Fat Man in North Korea threatening to drop Little Boy on us. There's so much to be grateful for -- and so much to be nervous about.

It's not surprising that the Fidget Spinner has become one of the most popular and most derided little toys of the 21st century. They give nervous hands something to do.

feel better?

Some people find it extremely distracting when others play with such things, though. Wikipedia says that some schools have banned them. I guess that it's a net loss when your nerve-relieving toy makes others nervous.

Now me, I know a little something about nerves. I grew up when nuclear holocaust was not just something we feared, it was something we expected. I didn't just bite my fingernails; I bit my toenails. I make coffee jumpy. I quit smoking a decade ago and I still want a smoke. I'd have been the Worrier King, if someone else hadn't grabbed the title years ago.

Despite all my fears, I would not let myself get some fidget spinning toy. That's for kids, not a grown man.

No, I got that toy at the top of this post. It looks like it might blow something up, but it's totally harmless. It's the Trianium Fidget Cube, billed on Amazon as an anti-stress/anti-anxiety and anti-depression cube. It's six sides of stress-easing goodness, with buttons to press, dials to turn, a ball bearing to -- do whatever it is you want to do with a ball bearing.

The button on top releases the kraken.

I thought it would be better to have this in my pocket than to bite my nails or jingle coins or beat a tattoo on the table during meetings. However, I realized as I sat near the head of the table at a meeting: this thing makes noise. The buttons and dials and switches click. In a quiet room, people can hear it. They want to know what it is and where it's coming from. And then I get paranoid that they're staring at me.

On the whole I think my stress-reliving toy just brought me more stress on balance. And I didn't even find it soothing when I was free to play with it. When you push buttons or spin spinners you expect something to happen; I find it frustrating when nothing does. The Trianium is like a flashlight with dead batteries. Click it all you want, ain't nothing happening.

Or is it? I have this idle fancy that the perfect combination of clicks and turns will set off a sequence that will lead to a Michael Bay-worthy explosion. Nobody who bought the toy has done it yet, but eventually one of us will.

Then one of us will be past worrying, anyway.