So Much to Think About

This should be a relaxing two weeks for me: no classes, no teaching, no obligations. But I'm finding that with a lot of free time on my hands, I have a lot of time to worry about things. I wish I wasn't a worrier by nature, but I just am. I've never exactly been a carefree person. Even as a tiny little kid I was always worrying about things. For example, I have a very distinct memory of Teddy Bear Picnic Day in kindergarten. It was supposed to be a joyous day where everyone would bring their favorite teddy bear to school and we would all show and tell about our bears and do crafts involving bears and eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches with our bears. And was I excited about this? Yes. Until I found out that we all had to tell our bear's name so that the teacher could make name tags for our bears. I was upset that my teddy bear's name was simply "Teddy" and not at all original, and I was worried that the teacher would think I wasn't as smart as the other kids because my bear didn't have a real name, so I was over in the corner wringing my hands, wondering if I should quickly make up a new name for my teddy bear. [In the end, I just told the truth...because I was worried that making up a new name would be lying.] I was always that kid in the corner wringing her hands. And although as I got older I got better at controlling and hiding my worries--to the point that when I tell people now that I was a shy, anxious kid, the response is always something like, "You? Really?! You seem pretty relaxed to me. And you talk all the damn time now!!"--the mental hand wringing still continues.
The worry doesn't really negatively affect my life, though. It's sort of hard to explain it. I worry a lot about things, but it's definitely not real anxiety. It doesn't keep me up at night, it doesn't stop me from doing things I want to do, I generally consider myself a very happy, lucky person. I really have relaxed a lot as I have gotten older. Now worrying is sort of like a weird, sick hobby, actually. When there's not enough going on to keep me busy, my mind starts making up all these worst-case scenarios and I start worrying about stupid things that I have no control over that are probably never going to actually happen anyway. And hey, you all know this about me by now. The truth is that I never stopped being that anxious kid at all, I just learned a bunch of coping mechanisms to deal with the low-level worries that are always in the back of my mind. One of those coping mechanisms is obviously keeping myself busy, because the minute I don't have enough projects to keep my mind occupied, I start making up things to worry about. When I'm working and socializing, there's enough on my mind that I don't have time to really worry about things unless they're definitely happening in the immediate future. And that's a healthy worry. After all, sometimes worrying about something and wanting to get it over with is the only reason I accomplish anything.
When I'm on a break, though, the irrational worries start to rear up. And while some of these worries are real things that I actually need to think about and figure out, none of them deserve the amount of time my brain has been devoting to them for the past couple of days.

So I'm putting them here since I know I'll feel better if I get them out of my head and down on (virtual) paper. Yes, I know some of these worries are ridiculous. I know I'm very privileged to even have such worries since pretty much everyone in the world has bigger problems than I do. I know that, logically. It doesn't actually help to shut off the spinning hamster wheels in my mind, though.

1. My car. It randomly stalled out twice today while I was driving. One minute it was fine, the next minute the Check Gages light was on and the engine had shut off completely. I was able to just cruise into a parking lot and restart it immediately both times, but obviously this is not a good thing. It's actually pretty dangerous and probably needs to be fixed like, tomorrow. But I hate having to find a mechanic, I hate having to be without a car for any length of time, and I especially hate having to spend money on my car. While I love my car for getting me around and being cute and sporty, in my ideal world I wouldn't have to own a car or drive at all, so it pisses me off to have to pour money into one.

2. Which leads to the next worry, money. This is such a constant (albeit mostly irrational) low-level worry of mine that it barely even registers most of the time anymore, but some months just seem to conspire to make me spend way above my budget, and January apparently is going to be one of them. My sister was visiting and so I spent more money than usual on entertainment, although that's not a big deal since it was expected. What's getting to me are all of the other expenses I hadn't really factored into my budget: unexpected school fees, this car thing, a conference fee that was double the cost I expected it to be, my dog had to go to the vet for his bordatella shot but they wouldn't give it to me without a full wellness exam so I ended up having to pay triple what I was anticipating, etc. (Here's hoping when he's due for his rabies shot in May I can just say "Give me the shot ONLY, he just had a wellness exam in January that you did without even asking if that's what I wanted, so I know he's healthy." And then I can find a less tricky vet.) So all of these little things popped up unexpectedly, and the next two months are already going to be way more expensive than usual anyway since I have to buy many of my books for the semester, and I'll have to pay a ton of money to board my dog when I go to the conference next month since I won't have time in my schedule to drive him to Jersey to stay with my relatives and all of my dog-friendly friends are traveling with me.

3. Thinking about money always leads to my other irrational fear, never finding a job. Forget that my job hunt won't happen until years from now, when I have too much free time I start thinking about it. Am I doing enough right now to boost my resume? What if I can't finish a dissertation, or even start one, for that matter? Are there even going to be jobs available when it's my turn to go on the market? What if I have to move to Iowa to get a job (I don't know why Iowa is my scary, hell-no-I-don't-want-to-move-there state, but it is. Sorry Iowa, I'm sure you're lovely). This is my most pointless worry, and I know that. But it's still there sometimes. At least I have the consolation of knowing that everybody else I know worries about some version of this, too.

4. Speaking of money and jobs and things that I don't have to worry about yet but am thinking about already, I have no idea how I'm going to earn money this summer. The thought of going back to restaurant/bar work makes a bit of my soul want to shrivel up and die, but I also know it's by far the easiest way to make decent, fast money. So that's what I kind of want to do. But then there's this voice in my head that says, "Forget good money, you need to find something that you can actually put on a CV, you really shouldn't waste three months on a job that won't help you in the long run." I have no idea what to do about this yet, but lucky you, you can expect it to pop up here a lot in the next several months I'm sure.

5. My aunt's cat bit my cat when he was staying with them. Although my aunt says it's because her cat is a bitch, I'm sure it was also at least partially my cat's fault, because he's the coolest cat in the world when it comes to people but he can be a bit of a bully around other cats. I'm a little worried about the bite. It seems to be healing alright, but it has a huge bald patch around it and even though rationally I know that it's going to be just fine, I irrationally worry that I'm doing him a disservice by not taking him to a vet just to be on the safe side.

6. I got my bridesmaid's dress for my roommate's wedding, and I love the color and the style and it fits great everywhere except the bust, where it's too big. Surprise, surprise. So I'm trying to figure out if I should take it somewhere to get it altered, but where the heck does one go to get this done? This isn't something that can be done by the guy at the dry cleaners who hems pants, is it? Can you just go to a random bridal shop and ask them to do alterations even if the dress came from somewhere else? I tried looking it up on the internet, but all I found in my area was dry cleaners and other wedding shops. Ah! The top is just barely too big, so I'm tempted to just get a pair of those strapless stick on bra cups that boost your bust by a cup size, but will that just look tacky? I don't know!

7. I'm having a small health issue that has me a bit concerned, and a second pathology report that I got in the mail today didn't alleviate my concerns AT ALL. In fact, it made me more worried since it makes the problem seem worse than it seemed originally. My doctor says not to worry, and Google implies that I don't need to worry either. But it's not exactly reassuring to Google the results of a medical test and see the word "cancer" anywhere on the resulting pages at all, even as a tiny, tiny, TINY, so-tiny-it-shouldn't-even-be-listed-as-a-possibility possibility. I probably shouldn't even write this because it's totally blowing things out of proportion. Probably I'll have more testing done in a few months (which is the only thing my doctor says I need to do for now) and everything will show up fine after all. So you shouldn't be worried, and I shouldn't be worried, but, hey, it's on my mind, and that's what this list is for. Worst-case scenario things I worry about.

So yeah. Those are the things my mind has been turning over today. But then I do a good workout and I feel really good. I go outside and it's freezing but the sky is starry and it smells like chimney smoke and there's a chance of snow this week, and I'm happy. I look down to pet the dog that is using my lap as a pillow and notice that the cat is now using the dog as a pillow, so we're all one warm comfy chain, and I think, "Why do I even worry about anything when there's so much that's good about my life?"