I have always been a bit “high strung.” It does not take much to get me anxious about something. Situations that most “normal people” would either blow off or not even remember. (And by normal people, I pretty much mean anyone who has not yet admitted they are in fact just as crazy as everyone else but are still in denial.) These are the very things that will make me a hand-wringing lunatic. My mind will wander off on some wild tangent until I become completely wound tight over nothing.
Remember that time back in 1986 when that girl that you really didn’t know that well said she didn’t like your hair? Why? Why would she do that? I didn’t even know her that well. Is my hair still bad? What if my hair IS bad and I don’t even know it? I THOUGHT it was good then. I never should have told her to I wished bad things would happen to her for being so mean. What if something horrible happened? Oh, hell, what if she came to some unspeakable, tragic end because I said that to her simply because she didn’t like my hair?! I should look her up and make sure she is okay. I will have to remember to do that tomorrow.
Obsess much?
There are also those things that I actually can fix and yet, they wind me tighter than a drum. Forgot to RSVP to a party until the day before or day of? Good Lord, that will have me up nights worrying about it until well after the party is forgotten. How could I be so rude? The laundry is piling up? Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? What if Clint is out of underwear? Or the boys don’t have clean shorts? Or Gabrie’s favorite dress isn’t clean the very moment she wants to wear it? I look at the laundry and freak out. The pile is just not going away! Anxiety attack commence. Hello? Wash the damn clothes and move on! I know that. Really I do. But like I said, I have an amazing capacity to be high strung and anxious for no good reason.
Now then, give me a good reason to be a bit uptight and you better be prepared to medicate me or get the hell out of my way. (Sorry, Tommy, but some of us actually do better in society with a bit of medicinal help. Feel free to preach to me about the dangers of addiction. I’ll shove it right back atcha, honey.) Suffice it to say that when I have good things happen, things that I am actually excited about, I become an anxiety-ridden freak. I do not have time to be an anxiety-ridden freak when I am staring down the barrel of an already missed deadline. NO TIME I TELL YOU! Joshilyn Jackson had a blog entry that nailed it hysterically. (Read the comments, too. They are great!)
So here I sit, well past the deadline I imposed to get my chapters to my agent. Well below the word count I promised my writing buddy I would have completed tonight. Several hours short on sleep. So I blog. Not write what I am SUPPOSED to be writing. I Blog.
Raise your hand if you predict I will be lying awake tonight obsessing, freaking and doing a major amount of hand wringing because I DID NOT WRITE like I was supposed to do. And that I will completely become anxious over what my agent must think. And what I will tell my writing buddy. And how, oh for the love of god, the world is going to come crashing in around me tomorrow because I chose to BLOG!
Put your hands down. You’re going to make me worry about why you are all ganging up on me.
**For the record, the reason I am blogging right now is because I stayed awake last night obsessing over the fact that I had not written anything on my blog in days and while the last entry quite possibly garnered me the most private emails from the most people than from any other post I have ever written, it can’t just stay up there forever and I really must put something else up but what can follow something that touched so many people? Yeah. Welcome to my world, people Scary, huh!
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