The Nibble of Anxiety

Anxiety has begun to nibble at the outlines again.  For about a week, I felt blessedly free:  the house was sold, I was caught up on both seminary classes and the online classes that I teach, and the high stress people at work had gone on vacation.  Let me try to write my way out of my anxiety.  And let me also confess that my anxiety is the low grade kind, which makes me feel a kind of guilt for feeling anxious but not feeling like my anxiety warrants attention.

Of course, that is how our anxieties trick us and grow larger, which is why I try to defuse my anxieties early in the process, as early as I feel that nibble.

Today I feel a new anxiety because my spouse has both a colonoscopy and endoscopy tomorrow, which means today begins a process for him:  no food today, only clear liquids, no alcohol, and we'll end the day with a medicine that furthers the cleanse.  Note how I said that diplomatically.  I feel anxiety about this process to get ready for the procedure and anxiety about tomorrow's procedure.

I feel anxiety because two of my online classes finish at the end of February, and so the grading demands have picked up.  This week I will settle into grading; and tomorrow I'm taking a sick day to help care for my spouse, so I'll have time to catch up then.

I should feel less anxious about seminary classes than I do.  Yesterday, my spouse hooked up a laptop to the TV so he could watch the New Testament class lectures with me.  That was a treat.  We both learned a lot about the art of Roman-Greco letter writing and about Paul's approach.

But the nature of seminary classes is that there is always work to do, always reading, always writing.  I did realize during the break between terms that I like having that work to do.  During the break, I felt at loose ends.  I do wish that I didn't feel the need to check and double check and check again to make sure that I haven't forgotten anything.  But that checking doesn't take too much extra time, and it feels less like an anxiety symptom and more like a behavior that keeps me on track. 

Let me also remember the joys to help keep my anxieties tamped down.  At some point in December, our condo building created a game room, and my spouse and I have been enjoying improving our pool game.  He's much more serious about improving than I am, but so far, it hasn't impeded my enjoyment.  He's slightly better than I am, but not so much that we can't enjoy our games.

It's not the rooftop pool, which is still closed for repairs (sigh).  But it's something we wouldn't be doing if we weren't renting a condo in this building.  And we wouldn't be renting this condo if we hadn't decided to sell the house.  And we did finally sell the house!

That knowledge, that we did sell the house, is enough to tamp down most of my anxieties.