High Anxiety

I can feel it . . . the strange tenseness in my body, the repetitive phrases looping in my brain as the day goes on, the fog of anxiety wrapping me up throughout the day.

I am getting worried about my project again.

It was going well (so I though) a few weeks ago. I had about two weeks of steady sailing and progress. I thought the worst of the planning stage was behind me, some things were underway, and I figured I knew how to get the rest up and running.

Then the Big Mistake occurred and I've been discombobulated ever since. While my days are better than they were During the Realization of the Mistake and the Explanation of the Mistake and the Finding of all the Resulting Problems due to the Mistake, I have lost what slender confidence I had in my progress.

Now, at almost any time I can doubt what I am seeing, wonder what I am misinterpreting, dreading the Next Big Mistake (even if it never comes).

This is the sort of thing that I used to do when I was younger, an anxious school-ager worried on the night before the first day of school, worrying about classes I hadn't even entered, assignments I had not been given, projects that my siblings had done before me but I had not yet undertaken. This is why my mom and dad took me to a counselor for several months so that I could talk to him about my worries and prevalence for fearing the unknown.

I have never quite gotten over it and I understand that a certain amount of anxiety is what makes us get out of bed a give a shit about what other people think, but I don't want these next several months of work to consume me and make me think constantly about work, worry about working when I want to be having fun with my family, destroying my life outside of the work-a-day world. I don't want this to happen, though I am completely aware that it is happening to others around me.

I'm trying to get a grip.