When I was lickle, I had a book for collecting autographs. It wasn’t my idea. Neither was collecting the autograph of Harvey Smith, a celebrated show jumping man in a red blazer. Heck, show jumping is pants. Harvey Smith was good at something pants, big deal. And he can sign his own name on demand. Whoopee. So, as the most important person in my life, I started signing my own autograph book, with witty and amusing poems. I even let my sister sign it, despite her being a girl, and liking show jumping, which is pants. She signed it:
You die if you worry
You die if you don’t
So why worry at all?
Wise words for a seven year old. But did I heed them? My arse, did I. Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I was worrying about the fact that my mind was racing. I was, in fact, worrying that I was worrying. “Why am I worried? Is it work?”
I like to think it isn’t work. I had an appraisal at work last week. There were boxes on a form that asked what my one, two and five year career goals were. My appraisor and I agreed that I should leave them blank, as I didn’t have any. In the box labelled “Where do you want to be in six months time?”, my appraisor suggested, “On a beach?”. I nodded my complicity. So I figure I can’t be that worried about work.
Now I’m worried that I don’t know what I’m worried about. Neurotic? I don’t think so. But the only way to stop worrying is to stop thinking. And the only way to do that is, as Will Self, Phil Temples and Ramon Salter put it:
“Over the past couple of hours a lot of rebarbative, ulcerated and embittered people had been working hard at bedding their resentments down in sensory-deprivation tanks full of alcohol.”
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