One Worry to the Next

I had a worry recently. 

Is that an all right way to say it? Perhaps ‘I was worried about something recently’ might read better? ‘I was recently worried about something’? Who cares? You know what I mean. This worry was a fairly substantial one, enough to occupy one’s mind (well… my mind, to be specific). It wasn’t just a trivial thing, to my mind at least.

What was this worry, Ken? Well, never you mind. This is a blog we’re running here, not a feckin’ confessional. Imagine a fairly substantial worry of your own and apply it here. The effect will be much the same.

This worry was of a particular nature where a moment of reckoning would inevitably come. A precise moment where, once it came and went, the worry would either have blown up into a fully formed difficulty or else it would have completely gone away in an instant, evaporating into the ether. The build up to this zero-moment was understandably twitchy. Would things be all right or would they not? Tick tock, tick tock. The moment came, it held for a long, long moment… and then it passed. There was no worry anymore. Everything in the garden was immediately rosy. All was well.

Phew. Time to celebrate. Time to jump around a bit.

Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you? You would expect that there would be a blissful lifting of pressure and worry and random scenario-running and all that kind of stuff. But that wasn’t really how it went.

What actually happened was that my mind kind of said, “Right, that’s all over and done with now. What shall I worry about next?” And a whole list of lesser things immediately presented themselves to be worried about. The funny this is, if the big worry moment had gone the other way, I wouldn’t have been giving any of these other things a second thought. But there they were nonetheless, in the queue, waiting patiently to be worried-about by me.

What’s that all about?

It wasn’t always the case, at least I don’t think it was. There was a time where I could celebrate if a cause for worry was suddenly lifted from me. I don’t necessarily mean I would fall around the place hugging grannies and weeping for unmitigated joy. I just mean there would be some tangible sense of relief or ease. In this case, the overriding sensation was one of… nothing. The thing that had occupied most of my waking moments – and quite a few of my sleeping ones – had vanished and yet I felt no better off than I was before.

That’s this week’s post, in a nutshell. I usually have some kind of a conclusion or, at least, a tidy little round up on which to close the thing out. Not this time. At least, as I type this word… no, I don’t know what the tidy conclusion might be. I’ll stop typing for a moment and think about it. I’ll see if anything occurs…

… …

Nope. Not really.

Reading back, it sounds like I’m in some sort of crisis or something but nothing could be further from the truth. The worry was small enough, in retrospect at least. The relief when the worry finally went away was just surprisingly non-existent. That’s all. Perhaps it’s just an age thing. Perhaps, the older we get, the fewer peaks and troughs we ride. Maybe things just level out. Except that last trough seemed ‘trough-ey’ enough. It’s the peaks that don’t quite peak like they should.

And then there’s another thought. Maybe I’m just imagining it all. Don’t I feel a lot better now than I did at the zenith of the worry. I believe I do. More relaxed, more at ease. So fucking what if I didn’t throw a thanksgiving parade just because my stupid little worry went away? Looking back, it probably didn’t even warrant a big reaction. Things are grand again, isn’t that all that matters?

That’s it. This navel-gazing has been brought to you by me. Have a lovely day.

And, if you should find that a worry of yours suddenly goes away from you, try to have an even nicer one.