How To Worry

Photo Caption: Cartoon of a person worrying about the world, money falling.

We are on the road, with the exception of one day home, for Thanksgiving, for three weeks. This means that there are so many variables that need to be worried about, because worry is such a helpful part of my emotional vocabulary, that there is often little room for anything else. There's just so much that can go wrong, even with meticulous planning, when travelling with, and in, a wheelchair. So far, though we are just starting, we've been doing mostly OK. Rooms have been accessible and we've gotten where we are supposed to go with little problem.

What's been remarkable, so far, is that at every stage of this trip, Joe and I break the trip down into survivable sections, each with worries independent of each other, in this way we organize our worries into groups where they can do the most good, is that our worry is working. So we don't worry about the hotel on the first night, when we've got the flight to worry about first. This keeps the lists of 'could go wrongs' short and our worrying more targeted. We find that most effective.

What's been great so far is that there's been at least one person within each worry segment that's been remarkable, we never worry about getting remarkable people, of course, we're just focus or worry on getting unhelpful or unlovely people - worrying never strays into hope - that's a recipe for disaster. But worry or not, we've had some amazing people.

From the lesbian bus driver who picked us up and took us to the airport. She had us laughing all the way. She's one of the most naturally funny people I've ever met. She distracted us from our worry, which I think was her diabolical intent, as we laughed for almost 45 minutes straight. We got off the bus feeling so refreshed, which is an amazing feat given that we were at the airport at 4:45 AM. We were then able to return to worrying with a renewed sense of purpose.

Yep, worrying has got us this far.

Someone said that I should convert worrying to prayer. Now there's a conversion that I don't want to make. I don't want to be waking God up at 3 in the morning with a request that the bus arrive on time. I think what with the state of the world, God's got worries lined up for an eternity. I leave the world to God and take care of my stuff with my own skilled and muscular worrying.

Well, gotta go do a keynote speech.

Worrying is ready to click into place ... ah there it is ... in the pit of my stomach ... got to go and get that done!