september 25 etc
Two days ago I let y'all peek inside my head. Yesterday I got mushy and talked about love, joy, and peace. Today... I don't have a lot left, and what energy I do have is getting spent doing the things you do before you go out of town for a few days because ββ wait for it ββ I'm going out of town for a few days.
The day before I travel is always the worst day of my life. The fear that I am going to forget something makes me double- then triple- then quadruple-check everything, and I always end up forgetting something anyway. I always overpack and then repack and still end up overpacking. I worry that something will happen to a hotel reservation or a dinner reservation and even though nothing ever does, it potentially can so I have to think about it. I worry about things. You get the idea.
Thing is, as much as I worry I'm not an anxious traveler. When I'm on the road and something goes wrong I never freak out. I just calmly figure out what I can do in that moment and then do it. And if there's nothing to do, I do nothing until I figure out a course of action that will get me from where I am (metaphorically and literally) to where I need to be.
In short, you may not be the person you fear you might be.
I used to think I was the most anxious person on earth, but then I got a bit healthier and realized that what I thought was anxiety was a fear of punishment. A fear that if something went wrong, someone was going to hurt me. In my case, this wasn't nature ββ it was nurture. I was taught this. I learned this. And when I realized that it no longer applied and, moreover, that it wasn't how I wanted to live my life, I deleted that particular bit of malware from my hard drive.
If George Eliot Mary Ann Evans was right, if it really isn't too late to be what you might have been, I don't think it means that you should abandon your career and family to try to make it as a ventriloquist or a rodeo clown or the inventor of hamburger earmuffs. Maybe all it means is that when you are ready, you can and should offer yourself the grace you need to slough off parts of yourself that are no longer serving you and move forward with less gear on your back.
On y va!
π²π² Because so many people who read yesterday's post asked, we had dinner at Dotty's. (combatdavey.net; dotty's.ca)
π¦πΊπ I didn't know I needed this supercut of Alanna Smith saying hello in my life but I did. (Twitter/ezimagbegoat)
πΉπΉ The skateboard Tony Hawk landed the first 900Β° on in 1999 sold for a lot of money yesterday. (ESPN)
πΉπΉ Fun fact: the skateboard emoji from Emojipedia (i.e. the one I've used here today) was modelled after Tony Hawk's skateboard and Hawk himself was involved in its development. (Emojipedia)
βοΈπ₯ The excellent Joan Westenberg wrote a banger of a post about how stoicism has been weaponized and I think you should read it. (joanwestenberg.com)
π΄π΄ Summoning up the courage to ask my better half if we can get this for our home. (Twitter/horseimage)
πβΎ Need some sports-concerned jetsam and flotsam in your life? Check out the digest post I just dropped over at Oddball. (oddball.blog)
ππ Check out this old Vice Principals promo something-or-other featuring Walton Goggins and Danny McBride smoking weed and talking about crimes dressed as the Hamburglar and Ronald McDonald. (Twitter/Todd_Spence)
ππ RIP Nancy Leonard, the First Lady of the Indiana Pacers who is credited with saving the team in 1977. (Fieldhouse Files; espnW)
π² gonna
πΌ go
π± touch
π³ grass
π· now
Be good to yourself.
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