un-worry

Worry and anxiety have been big themes in the last couple of weeks around here:

You may recall that I moved last year about this time into a new place. It’s the first time I’ve really felt “at home” in 20 years, and it has allowed me room to breathe for just $800/month.  The landlords invited me to “stay forever” and offered to keep this incredible rate as long as I chose to live here. Well, I just learned that they are now selling the house and that I need to move out, after only one short year.

As the book has just gone to print and speaking in conjunction with the book has only begun to open up, other sources of income have simultaneously and inexplicably dried up. I’m at a crossroads where I am faced with the choice to either find a way to allow these new options, as well as the ongoing mentoring, time to emerge and flourish – or to take on regular hours of “just-pay-the-bills” type work again, which would limit both my mentoring and speaking opportunities severely.  This is in conjunction with now needing to move and all the financial changes that will involve.

Just yesterday, I wound up in the ER for seven hours with extreme internal pain … and lots of time to wonder what it could be. That is, in fact, why today’s post is late in getting published. (No worries; it was not life-threatening. I’m home now recuperating and will live to see another day.)

Everyone faces moments or periods of anxiety, worry, fear or outright dread. No matter how serene we may be, sudden change, bad news or added challenges affect us.  However, the degree to which worry controls our mind or capsizes us remains within the realm of choice.

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bigger than the bubbles

I heard this week that Amazon.com is expecting to begin implementing a flying drone program this year, which will get products to customers’ doors about a half hour after placing an order online. I suspect that, not long after this goes into effect, people will be standing by the door 31 minutes after ordering, shaking their heads in irritation about their “late” delivery.

In a society that is ever more fast-paced, it’s easy for people to forget that we have control of (and responsibility for) things as integral and personal as our own thoughts and reactions.

As technology advances, “developed” humans find ways to take multi-tasking and expectations of results to increasingly higher levels. Pencil-and-paper math problems were replaced by simple touch calculators, which were replaced by smaller and more complex computers. Currently, I can just ask Siri to figure out my math problem for me. And in most instances, automatic algorithms predict my needs and solve problems in the background without my ever realizing the math is happening at all.

The faces of our smart phones are arrayed with neat rows of a hundred apps, all with little red bubbles demanding that we must find out RIGHT NOW that our friend Sarah “loves peanut butter so much (!!!)” or that someone just recorded himself riding a unicycle across a rain gutter. And we have accepted, for the most part, that relieving ourselves of these red bubbles is acceptable at any time: at work, while with family, out to dinner with a friend, on the john.