metaphortunate

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Massive glucose wages, hee.

Sympathies. I tend to do a related thing, contingency-planning awful things, which is useful up to a point and then starts spiraling down. Recognizing the spiral and consciously telling myself "Okay, that's enough, you've got everything useful out of that scenario" does often work, at least.

Also, I still remember the day we bought SteelyKid a couple of toys, came home, and watched her play with an empty Gatorade bottle all afternoon. Babies.

I spent yesterday afternoon freaking out in the toddler toys aisle, about what if Godot doesn't have toys to play with on the plane. So I bought him some super friends figurines, and reading you guys saying this is immensely reassuring, because even on a plane I bet I can find an empty bottle or six.

I am sure the flight staff would be happy to find you empty bottles! (And yay, Godot imminent?)

Until pretty recently SteelyKid tended to sleep on long-ish car trips, so my travel-toy experience is limited, but if it would help I'd be happy to share what she likes.

On a plane next Tuesday!

Best wishes!

Good god! Best of luck to you all!

Omg yay!

I want to know! We frequently tell a screaming Junebug that, you know, some kids sleep in the car because they find it soothing! Then we laugh like maniacs.

Unfortunately I have a big gap around Junebug's age! I mean, I take those breakable-ring-things and fasten in rattles and teethers to infant carriers, but that's more for short car rides and for times in stores.

And SteelyKid's only stopped napping reliably in the car pretty recently, like I said, so what keeps her occupied are things like her digital camera [*] (though this also involves a lot of me twisting around to look at what she's taken); a mini magnetic drawing board, the kind with an attached stylus; silly little ghosts/Easter bunnies/etc. that you press a button and they light up and spin, the kind you find for five bucks in the drugstore seasonal aisle; and fake car keys that make noise, though only because we were able to negotiate that she did not press the alarm button. Also lots and lots of snacks.

[*] A several-years-old Canon A-series, originally Chad's obsolete one, then when I broke that, a similar type bought on eBay for thirty bucks, because kids' digital cameras have rotten features, especially lousy little screens. The first camera was a little heavy for her at first but it had a lot of space for her to wrap her hands around, which is a problem with smaller adult cameras.

And around about 2.5-3 years, my mom started letting her borrow her iPod Touch to play toddler games. We've yet to resort to Chad handing over his iPad, with or without Winne-the-Pooh on it . . .

IDK if this would work for two-year-olds, but one of the Junebug's most frequent travel toys has been an empty water bottle with $0.07 worth of pennies in it to make a rattle.

SteelyKid will be four in August, has a thing for rocks, and one of those things is still putting them in other things to make noise. (Increasingly the other things are elaborate rules for their acquisition and placement that change every five minutes, as is only to be expected.)

Yeah...I definitely do that thing of "If I worry about it, it won't happen while I'm worried about it! Must lie in bed and worry as hard as I can about earthquakes!" Uh, no, we bolted the bookcases to the walls & got an emergency preparedness kit in the car. That is all the useful worrying we can do, unless we want to study to become neighborhood rescue volunteers, which would be awesome but not very realistic right now.

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