Hey people,
I’ve stumbled out of bed semi-upright and discovered I have enough of an attention span to type after a day and a half of mostly sleeping, whining, and worrying about all the things I’m neglecting. I caught the stomach bug from hell, and have stayed home from work the past two days, although I’ve managed to respond to a couple emails today. Bleh.
Without getting too deep into the gory details, I did make a discovery that bears some thinking. Stomach cramps can be made worse by anxiety. And an awful lot of things I think about produce anxiety. It’s actually HARD for me to go very long without thinking of something that makes my stomach muscles tighten.
Ucellina put up a good post a couple days ago about her guilty pleasure of lurking on right-wing websites– and while I agree it’s good to be informed, I think that that sort of thing tends to mess with me more than it empowers me. Chris Shinn once said in an article about one of my heroes, Jon Stewart, that he worried that Stewart encourages cynicism. The more informed I have become, the more cynical I have been about some things– and I will concede that cynicism softens some of the real pain I feel about the state of the world. Maybe it is good for my stomach muscles but not so good for the world.
On a more micro level, I work for a nonprofit that has had more than its share of problems for quite some time. A lot of it is financial, a lot of it is past abuses by people who have since moved on, and a good deal of it just comes down to conflicting personalities under constant pressure. I make a great deal of effort in my work to be a force for action and positive change, but there are times when things feel insurmountable, or when the actions of others just make me roll my eyes. And there are other times when reasonable people perceive a lack of action in myself and I feel overwhelmed and defensive– I try so hard that when things fail it can be debilitating. So I guess it makes sense that I would be anxious.
Sometimes it’s good to be sick and drop out of the world for a short period of time. I have been fighting against my breakneck lifestyle for so long, and sometimes horrible illness is the only mental freedom to be found. I hope that if I do go back to work tomorrow it will be a more Rested Me.
