I haven't had it in a while but today I'm suffering from my own made-up anxiety disorder. Perhaps you have it, too. You wake up in the morning and everything seems okay. You get the coffee going and you know you've got a few chores to do that will eat some time. The skies are a gray that cannot be described and everything is dead. The trees look dead. The grass looks dead. Even people at the store look half-dead. Your world is void of color.
You get home from the store and make a fabulous breakfast for the hubby and stick a frozen peach pie in the oven because you know it will make the house warm and the peach color will do you good. The dishes are done and you still have chores left to do but then it hits you ... it's noon already and there are only so many hours left in this little two-day mini vacation that most call the weekend.
As much as I try to stay on the positive side of life, this anxiety hits me occasionally and although I've found ways to cope with it, they are not working very well today, so I write. And, I take more dumb pictures of the fruit bowl. And, I try to relax and enjoy what's left of the day.
I say it out loud to my hubby, who has been retired since shortly after we met. He knows exactly what I'm talking about and it helps ease the un-ease in the pit of my stomach. I am not alone. Other people suffer from weekend anxiety.
Last weekend, I finished up a book, one of many stragglers that I had started reading long ago and left unfinished. There on page 234 of Walking Home, Lynn Schooler (most excellent author!) writes, "Again there was an odd moment of clarity in my senses, a surge of calm that made note of a single sandpiper running on toothpick legs along the edge of the surf, its head bobbing as it needled the sand. A raven called kla-hook from the trees. It is a hard thing to describe, but somewhere inside of me I heard my own voice say, "Use a meteor. Save the smoke." He was describing his thought process as he was being stalked by an injured bear in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out how to use the limited tools he had to escape his unfortunate situation. He had, against his own good judgment, left behind a gun he normally took with him on his sojourns.
I loved this paragraph in the book because I believe writers and artists learn to listen to that voice.
Earlier today, while I was standing in the kitchen on the edge of the abyss, fighting off an imaginary injured bear, I had a moment of clarity, heard that voice and I knew what to do. Sit down and write. Take a break. Read a little. Nap a little. Watch an episode of Sons of Anarchy. Go outside and pick up dog poop. Make chili. Listen to that webinar I missed last week. Make a week's worth of lunches. Stop looking at the clock. I don't feel so paralyzed by it now. Thank goodness.
Do you suffer from weekend anxiety?
love, susan
Sometimes I do. Hubby has very few weekends off; the oneshe works I sometimes get anxious about how much I need to do that I may not get done. The ones he has off I tend to worry about everything we need/want to do together.
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