worry

This week I tried a different experiment. From last Sunday to yesterday, I tried not to worry.

Because I've been worrying a lot lately, and I can't seem to just stop. But I can put it off. I can say to myself "Now's not a good time to worry about ______, I have to be doing this other thing." So this week I tried to leverage that to, for a whole week, Not Worry about:

• whether my relationship is inevitably headed towards married heterosexual 2.5 kids suburban nightmarish mutual hatred then divorce given that we already have the married and the 1 kid
  
• how we are going to make sure the baby gets proper nutrition as we transition him off of nursing
  
• whether the baby is getting enough attention & time with us
  
• whether we are reading to the baby enough
  
• whether the baby has the right kind of toys or whether it will damage his little psyche to be playing with empty contact lens solution bottles in the bath instead of rubber duckies
  
• what I am going to do about my parents when they start getting old and sick
  
• how I am supposed to find time to do career networking and extracurricular activities
  
• whether Mr. E and I are taking each other for granted
  
• is it better to be doing lower-status/skills work on high-profile projects or high-skills work on non-billable stuff like marketing, when my company has a track record of laying off/firing the people who find themselves working on non-billable stuff and therefore not being directly and obviously profitable
  
• is there anything I can even do about that when I don't get to pick my assignments
  
• how much responsibility can I take on given how much I can't stay late
  
• how much time I will end up needing to take off this year
  
• how am I ever going to find time to do all the extra work required for licensure
  
• the friends I never get to see
  
• factory farming and how I am contributing to it
  
• the death of bookstores
  
• whether democracy is an nonviable long-term system
  
• how much money I am spending these days
  
• etc., etc., EE MOTHERFUCKING TEE CEE
  
• how we need to stop cursing in front of the baby

Results of the experiment:

• The first two to four days went really well. I think I felt more relaxed and happier. It was easy to say to myself, as these worries came up, "I'm not worrying about this now. All these problems will still be here next week, and I can worry about them then," and make myself think of other things. As a nice bonus, when I'm not indulging in unproductive worrying, I can actually do something about the things I'm worried about, so I got some work done on my licensure requirements towards the beginning of the week.
  
• The end of the week was filled with anxiety and tension. It became more like "I'm not supposed to be worrying! Aargh! STOP WORRYING!" And one of my normal strategies for dealing with worry is to talk to Mr. E about my fears and whether or not they are reasonable, but I couldn't do that this week because I was meant to be Not Worrying. So that sucked and contributed to feeling awful.
  
• All those problems continue to exist and be available for me to worry about this week, except that like I said I did get to do some useful time management and licensure stuff early in the week, plus I bought the baby a toy boat to play with in the bath. (Making the spending money problem worse, I suppose, but not by much.)
  
  Conclusion:
  Maybe I need to start with one- or two-day Not Worrying sessions and work up to longer. Maybe I also need to start scheduling brainstorming sessions in which I can think about solutions to the problems. Worry is probably useful in that it alerts me to things I need to keep track of in my life and maybe do something about, but once the conscious brain has been alerted to the issues, it may be time for it to justify its massive glucose wages and get off its lazy lobes and do some work.