Tag: Fear

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Intolerable Uncertainty

(WARNING: The following is dark, contains profanity, and you may not want to read it)

Last night I gazed too long into the abyss, and before I knew it, the abyss had taken my hand, and we were going on a tour of all of the bad shit that was going to happen in the next few months.

For about two hours before bed, while watching TV I wasn’t really watching, against my own advice from my last blog post, I surfed news stories on my iPad, going from one to the next, basically asking the same question, “How long will this last?”

My mind has been telling me, “Your business will not survive this. You’re fine right now, but what about tomorrow? You just cancelled a trade show and a business trip, what about the next trip, what if my clients go out of business, what if this art thing I’ve worked on for the past 20 years just vanishes like a fart in the wind, where am I going to work when this is over, ….what if, what if, what if…”

I’ve slept on the couch two or three nights a week the past month, so I didn’t toss and turn and keep Shonna up. No reason for both of us to lay awake wrestling demons. Then I read something that says if you’re not sleeping, it’s even worse for your mental and physical health because it compromises your immune system.

Well, thanks. That makes me nod off with dreams of kittens and rainbows, now doesn’t it?

As mentioned in a recent post, catastrophizing is one of my worst bad habits, and this virus has opened the flood gates of despair, as I’m sure it has for many. This post pretty much contradicts the slightly more optimistic tone of the other, because as we’re all learning, this situation changes by the minute.

Now with what should be more time to do anything I want to do, paint, write, draw cartoons, everything takes a lot longer because I get distracted by a news story, news alert, phone call and then down the rabbit hole I go.

A cartoon I drew yesterday that should have taken a couple of hours to draw took about five, because, in the middle of that, I had several newspapers from one chain tell me they were shutting down for the month of April, possibly May. That’s in addition to the half dozen that did so at the end of last week.

We’re bombarded by stats and articles telling us how bad this is going to get, and projections that tell us we’re in this lock-down until the end of April FOR SURE…no wait, MAY…no wait…JULY…no wait…FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES.

Logically, I know that the majority of these articles, blog posts, science journals, pseudo-science journals are all just spewing information so that they have something to post, and that 95% of it is conjecture, but I seek out the worst ones. It’s a desperate search for anything I can control. If I can deal with the worst-case scenario, then I can deal with anything better than that. But it means reading a lot of bad shit.

It doesn’t matter that I know I’m being illogical, Spock. I’m human, which means I’m illogical, you green-blooded pointed eared Vulcan!

Anybody else notice that Dr. McCoy was racist?

The worst-case scenario almost never happens, but because I said almost, that means it could happen, so hello darkness, my old friend.

I would love to be spending my time writing, but all of the story ideas, notes, the novel I’m working on, sitting there waiting for me to put in the time, I just can’t focus. And in the time I do make to work on anything creative, it all seems like garbage because I see it through a dark negative lens.

It would be nice to come out the other side of this with a stack of new images to license and yet I’m finding it hard to paint. It doesn’t feel like this will ever end, and when it does, I’ll have lost so much that my focus will be on survival, not success.

That’s the problem with catastrophizing. It’s sticky stuff, and if you do manage to get one leg free from it, you’re in it up to your knee with the other.

At this point in the post, I’m supposed to turn this around and start saying that we’ll get through this, we‘re in it together, there are always people worse off, do your part, it’ll be over soon, take this opportunity to discover new things, when one door closes, another door opens, blah, blah, blah.

There’s a meme I thought was funny when I first saw it, but now I find it infuriating. It reads, “Your grandparents were asked to go to war. We’re being asked to sit on the couch.”

Then it ends with variations of, “Don’t screw this up,” or “We got this” or “Suck it up, Princess.”

It just feels like so much bullshit.

Shaming people into acceptance doesn’t work. All it does is tell us that who we are is unacceptable and makes us bury our feelings of despair, so we don’t make strangers feel uncomfortable. Too long on that course and you’re looking at a nervous breakdown, a heart attack or worse.

The truth is, life has always been hard, and this is hold-my-beer level hard. People need to feel their pain and chastising somebody else to cheer up does more harm than good.

I try to tell myself that many others have gone through horrific stuff and came through it, far worse than this. The people who went through the 1918 pandemic, those who endured concentration camps, devastating financial crises, health crises, 9/11, our history is replete with people surviving long odds.

For 10 million people who died in the concentration camps, I can’t imagine the hopelessness and despair, a horrific end to their lives at the hands of cruel oppressors. And despite the courage and endurance of those who survived it and lived to tell the tale, I can’t imagine there were many, lying in their hard wooden bunks, packed in like sardines, freezing all night, awaiting their fate, telling each other, “Hey, we’re all in this together, and some people have it worse, cheer up, mmmK?”

Sharing online finger-wags about what Anne Frank, John McCain, or the Chilean miners put up with while imprisoned in their own circumstance is just more online shaming. Yes, they endured, but they weren’t having a good time!

This isolation we’re being asked to do is not just sitting on the couch watching Netflix, drinking wine and playing board games, without a care in the world.

It’s watching our savings dwindle away, the panicky market destroy investments, our businesses close, possibly to never open again, our careers implode, relationships suffer, the fruits of our labour shrivel up and die on the vine, and any plans we made up and vanish, while we just sit and wait, unable to do anything about it, for who knows how long?

This is not a vacation for which we should be expected to feel grateful.

Yes, people have gone through worse, but putting a metric on somebody else’s pain does not diminish our own. These are still our lives. Expecting people to shrug and say, “aw shucks, shit happens” is not only unrealistic, it’s cruel, especially when it took two seconds to share a meme or post that wasn’t designed to make somebody feel better, but to make them feel worse. You’re just scolding friends, family and strangers for having real human emotions and a difficult time coping with them. People have different tolerances for pain, and most of us are pretty damn hard on ourselves already without the added weight.

Knocking somebody down does not make you taller. It makes you a bully.

Instead of drawing first thing this morning, I just poured all of the angst into this, hoping for some sort of pressure release valve, because having a global sing-along is not going to do it for me. I almost didn’t post this because of worries over branding, being negative, pissing people off, and not being enough of a Polly Anna.

I’m not dealing well with this, and I imagine that’s the case for most people, each with their own unique grievances.

I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know if this will go on for a couple of months or many months? I don’t know if, at the end of this self-isolation, there will still be money coming in from anywhere for anybody. I don’t know how many will get sick, how many will die, if these measures are overkill, not enough, necessary, unnecessary, if the media is being irresponsible with the constant fear-mongering and death toll scoreboard, or if the fear is needed to scare people into compliance with the new rules.

I don’t know much of anything.

And that’s what’s keeping me up at night.

___

© Patrick LaMontagne
Follow me on Instagram @LaMontagneArt
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Broken News

I follow the news for a living, and at the best of times, it wears on me. A constant diet of negative news is awful for your mental health. I have to limit it as much as I can, or my mind goes down that dark rabbit hole of despair.

Now that many of you are home all day, I know you’re spending a lot of time on the internet, surfing through the horror, continual updates on the global death toll, getting into arguments online about which information is right or wrong, and then sharing news stories to your social media that you think sound right as if your friends aren’t surfing the same news you are.

We do this because it makes us feel like we’re in control and informed, when we all know that we aren’t.  In fact, by reading this stuff and sharing it, you’re making yourself even more anxious. When you share it, you’re not making people feel better; you’re making them feel worse. This virus of anxiety we’re all spreading is more damaging than the virus itself.

I’ve been actively avoiding phone calls and conversations with people because the whole discussion just ends up being about the news, this article and that, these facts and those, what Trump said, what Trudeau said, what this doctor said, what this victim said, and the numbers. I end up leaving the phone call feeling worse than before and wished I’d never called or picked up.

I understand it’s the topic on everybody’s lips, we’re all frightened, and we think that by talking it to death, it will make us feel better. Ask any psychologist, and they’ll tell you the opposite.

The media is hurting for revenue right now; they’re fighting each other for your online attention because they’re trying to get advertisers to keep paying them. The only way they can do that is to be upping the tragedy, to find new angles to make you afraid, new headlines to get you to open their link. They will never do that by telling you, “It’s going to be OK.”
I’ve always gotten news alerts from multiple outlets; it’s part of my job as an editorial cartoonist, it’s how I know a breaking story is happening, one that I might have to comment on with a cartoon. But in recent weeks, these outlets have been abusing the privilege. I now get multiple BREAKING NEWS alerts from each outlet throughout the day.

The Prime Minister’s been offering a daily briefing from his house because he’s been in isolation since his wife was exposed to Covid-19. CTV was sending me an alert that this was happening, which was helpful. But in recent days, they’ve been sending the alert about a half-hour early, meaning I tune in and have to watch/listen to doomsday coverage I don’t want to hear before I get to the coverage I need to see.

That’s click-baiting. And while I understand it, I resent it. And so should you.

The constant apocalypse feed breeds more anxiety, contributes to depression, and when those two degenerates get a hold of you, you start thinking irrationally and make poor decisions. Spending hours on social media, surfing the news and talking about all of this is not only detrimental to your mental health, but it’s also unsustainable.

I’ve had OCD for years, ever since I was a kid, though I didn’t know it until I was in my early thirties. While I’ve always been mindful of washing my hands, not touching my face, etc., mine doesn’t manifest as germophobia. OCD is much more than that. It’s about control, worrying, ruminating, fear, and anxiety.
After I went for groceries yesterday, I mentioned to a friend over email that the fear and tension in peoples’ faces were disturbing. But when this is all over, if people ask me what OCD is like, I now have an example. Do you remember how you felt all day long during the pandemic? That’s it, except that you feel it when times are good, too.

Mine has been much better over the past couple of years, mainly because I read some excellent books, was in therapy for a while, found coping tools, meditate almost every morning and I’ve established boundaries. I still worry more than is necessary about things I can’t control, but it doesn’t consume me like it used to.

The most significant contributing factor to my feeling better than I did, however, was limiting my exposure to the news and social media. The easiest way to know if it’s a problem for you is to try and turn it off for a day.

One day.

Don’t even look at it. If you can’t, you have a problem, and the first step to solving any problem is to admit that there is one.

If you can’t go one whole day without social media or the news, you don’t need me to tell you that’s an issue.

I’m not saying to avoid the news or social media forever. While we’re in isolation, we need to be informed, but be smart about it. Pick the news outlets you trust and follow them, especially your local news. Don’t click on anything and everything your friends post just because the headline or graphic triggers your fear. That’s what it was designed to do.

It shouldn’t matter to somebody in Saskatchewan that some people in Australia aren’t following social isolation rules. That’s a problem for them to solve. The borders are closed. They can’t get to you. There are almost 8 BILLION people on the planet. Following every story of tragedy for all of those people will ruin you, especially when most of those tragic stories are embellished, spun and manipulated for maximum fear.
My wife had to tell a friend two days in a row that a “news” story she shared was inaccurate; it took her no time at all to find evidence that it was false. But then she saw the same stories shared by a bunch of other people. Nobody is even bothering to check, primarily if it supports what they already believe. I shouldn’t have to explain how dangerous that is.

But to spend our isolation with a display in our hand all day long, punching that refresh button, madly scrolling for fear of missing out, you’re making yourself miserable, along with everybody with whom you’re sharing it.

If you’re going to share stuff, why not good news stories for a change? There are still plenty of those out there, too. Videos of people on their balconies singing, applauding first responders, live concerts online for charity, and kitten videos. Come on, you can never have enough kitten videos.

Your friends and family are already scared. You can contribute to that fear, or you can help them down off that ledge.

It’s a choice.

__

© Patrick LaMontagne
Follow me on Instagram @LaMontagneArt
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All Fear, All the Time!

I was going to write this long post about how hard this crisis is hitting freelance artists, those who work in the gig economy and me personally.

But after a few hundred words, it just sounded incredibly self-pitying, the kind of post I hate to read because it triggers feelings of, “you think you’ve got it bad?!”

We’re consuming way too much information on Covid-19, and then sharing it before we’ve even read the last sentence, usually with our own opinion tacked on.  We forget that everyone is hurting from this.

Everybody is scared, if not for health reasons, then for economic ones.

One friend is worried about what this will do to his retirement savings. Another manages an entertainment venue and saw every event cancelled for this month. Another works in tourism, and hotels around here are starting to lay people off. A few friends are brick-and-mortar business owners and are wondering if they’ll survive until this ends. Others are seniors and while financially stable, are the most vulnerable if they get sick. Another friend is a doctor, and she has accepted that she will get sick, sees it as inevitable. Another friend had to cancel his family trip to Mexico this week; he’s out about $4000 because cancellation insurance won’t cover it for this virus.

Then there are the businesses I work with in newspapers and tourism. Newspapers rely on ads, and when companies are on the ropes, they don’t buy advertising. When people aren’t travelling, and everybody is acutely aware of their finances, retail stores and gift shops are wary of what they’re stocking, which means the wholesalers that license my work aren’t selling as much. The trade shows they attend to introduce my work to new customers have been cancelled.

Despite my recent assurance that I’m still doing the Calgary Expo, five weeks away, I highly doubt they’re going ahead with it. And if they do, it’s going to be a dismal year for attendance and sales. I sent my last two paintings for proofing, but I have no idea when I’ll order prints of them. A waste of money for them to just sit in the closet with the extensive inventory I’ve already got.

So yes, I’m scared, just like everybody else.

Fear of the unknown. It’s the reason people are hoarding toilet paper and other supplies. It’s not because they’re crazy, it’s because they’re afraid. When there are so many uncertainties and things we can’t control, our nature is to look for anything we can control.

We may not know if we’re going to have a job next month, but at least we have toilet paper! It’s not the product itself; it’s what it represents—safety, stability, and comfort.

This need to control our environment expresses itself in many different ways. Some people do the buying and hoarding, while others make fun of them for it. Because If I can convince myself that I’m better than those crazy people, then that must mean I’m going to be safe. As if we needed one more thing to reinforce our US versus THEM mentality.

Then there are those in between. I’ll stock up on a little more toilet paper, but not too much. Fine, I’ll add a few more cans to the grocery cart, maybe some extra meat for the freezer. Might as well, I’m here, right?

And then when we get to the grocery store and see all of the empty shelves, the fear escalates, and we buy more than we’d planned.

Because, what if the crazies are right?

It’s all fear. And even though that’s OK, we also end up judging ourselves for being panicky little mammals, too. We know we shouldn’t be checking social media or the news as often as we are because it creates a destructive loop. But we still do, because…

What if?!

We do what we can with what we have, both in resources and information. Think twice before sharing every news story with your friends, because they don’t need to see it any more than you do. If they’re not following the news already, then they probably don’t want to see all of the articles YOU think they should.

We’ve all seen the graph about flattening the curve, so it doesn’t need to be posted again. We’ve all seen the conspiracy theories and the posts from doctors trying to be the voice of reason, the comparisons between the 1918 flu and the predictions of what happens if it gets worse.

We’ve all seen the videos of frenzied shoppers at Costco and the holier-than-thou posts from people who think they’re all idiots.

Some of the memes are pretty funny, sure. Laugh at the absurdity, but avoid the cruelty. These are your friends, your family and your neighbours, and they’re frightened. Cut them some slack. They’re judging you just as harshly, maybe not for this, but something else.

When we’re scared, we act irrationally. It’s human nature. Ironically, by trying to avoid this virus, we end up hurting ourselves with our coping mechanisms. We might drink a little more alcohol or partake of other substances, eat more unhealthy food, avoid exercise, socializing, and laughter.

We’ll spend even more time on the internet, hopping from one news story to the next, refreshing the feed, reading all of the comments, and then sharing the more truthy looking ones to social media, where we scroll madly through our news feed to see what we’ve missed. Then we check to see how many comments and likes we got on our apocalypse porn.

It’s difficult, but we do have the capacity to rein in these fears and habits. We need only summon the will.

I’m an atheist, but I’ve always liked the Serenity Prayer, favoured by Alcoholics Anonymous. It applies to so much of our lives, in good times and in bad.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I’m still short on the wisdom part, but I’m working on it.

Cheers,
Patrick

© Patrick LaMontagne
@LaMontagneArt
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Fear, Panic and Calgary Expo


In the wake of the rapidly changing (over)reaction to the Covid-19 virus, I’ve been thinking about the Calgary Expo next month.

It’s the only show I do, but it’s a big one. Close to 100,000 people attend each year. With the Alberta economy doing so poorly, my expectations for this year are already low. People don’t have a lot of money for luxuries, of which art is undoubtedly one.

But I was optimistic it would still be worth my time to connect with my regular customers, hold my booth space until things improve and hopefully make some money.

In recent days, however, with conferences and events being cancelled all around the world as people shy away from crowds, it’s now looking like the Calgary Expo could be twice cursed.

The Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle was postponed yesterday until sometime in the summer, a week away from their event, about the same size as Calgary’s. Leading up to it, the list of cancelled guests was huge. The organizers offered refunds to advance ticket holders nervous about attending because of the virus, and 10,000 people took them up on it. That’s a significant number.

The SXSW (South by Southwest) event in Austin, Texas, which draws 400,000 people, was cancelled yesterday.

So I find myself facing a dilemma. If I cancel, I lose my booth fees, $1200 in a year where my revenues are already taking a hit because of the economy.

I’m reminding myself of the sunk cost fallacy, which makes people do something against their best interest because of money already spent. We’re emotional, irrational creatures and will often tend to double down on a bad bet because of money or time we’ve already lost.

If I continue on this present course, I will spend more money on three nights in a hotel, electrical fees, parking, insurance, ordering more stock, only to potentially have a large corner booth in the middle of a ghost town for four days.

If the guests and celebrities don’t show up, people don’t show up. With the economy down and folks staying away out of fear, the odds of making enough sales to make a profit this year goes beyond optimism. It’s naïve wishful thinking, bordering on delusion.

If I cancel, I lose the booth cost and my preferred booth space, which is based on seniority. There’s a good chance I’d no longer do this event.

I’m not worried about getting sick. I have a healthy immune system and most people who get this particular coronavirus have mild symptoms and recover well. Seniors with existing medical conditions are the most vulnerable to this illness, and the Calgary Expo is just not their scene.

It’s not a question of fear or pessimism, but surveying the land and deciding if there’s a reasonable expectation of growing any crops there. I still want to do the Expo, but it’s a LOT of work, before, during and afterward. It seems foolish to invest that time and money only to be standing there for four days, stinking of desperation.

Ideally, it would be great if the Calgary Expo cancelled the event and issued refunds, but if that happens, I don’t see it coming for another month. They’d have a hard time postponing the event until the summer as Emerald City Con did because that would require a vacancy at the BMO Centre for a five day event, and that’s unlikely. If they cancelled the event this year and bumped everybody’s booth and fees to next year, I’d be okay with that, too.

A lot of people will be affected by cancelling Expo. This event is a big moneymaker for many, including me. For some, it’s part of the foundation of their annual income, especially those putting the con together. People have booked flights, rental cars, ordered stock and planned their big book, art, and product launches around this event. The local economy counts on this event, the largest in Calgary each year, second only to Stampede.

To lose it will hurt a lot of people.

To go ahead with it could be just as bad.

I’m an obsessive worrier by nature, and even I’m not worried about getting sick. Since the symptoms of coronavirus are mild for MOST people, I expect there are thousands worldwide who’ve had it, recovered from it, and nobody even knows. How often does the average person go to the hospital for the flu? Most will assume that’s just what they had.

But if one person dies or catches it at Calgary Expo and infects somebody else who dies, that could likely be the end of the whole event. The mass hysteria, finger-pointing and unreasonable fear that’s currently infecting the world are far worse than the virus itself. The court of public opinion, on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else would descend en masse on the organizers.

When we become gripped by unreasonable fear, we start looking for an enemy to blame.

The SARS outbreak in 2003 would have been far worse for the world and economy if we’d had social media. Daily updates on where the virus has shown up are incredibly bad for your mental health. What’s worse is that people aren’t only absorbing the panic; they’re spreading it on their own social media feeds.

This is new. We’re freaking out, and losing all perspective. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year, on average, 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. In the United States alone, 37,000 people DIE in car crashes each year.

Could you imagine being updated EVERY TIME somebody dies in a car accident, let alone gets hurt in one? We’d never get in our cars.

But we’re so used to it; we ignore it to the point where we have to be told not to use our phones while we drive.

Despite the assertions of everyone and anyone on Facebook, Twitter and the News Comments sections who have suddenly become virology experts in the past five minutes, there are no easy answers. There rarely are for complicated issues.

At present, I will wait on a decision, evaluate the situation as it unfolds, expect the worst, but hope for the best. Eventually, I’ll have to decide whether it’s worth it to go ahead or pull the pin, take the loss and accept the consequences.

In the meantime, I won’t be buying any masks, hoarding toilet paper or running and screaming every time I see an Asian person. It’s stupid, dangerous, and if it goes unchecked, it won’t be long before we’re turning on each other. Because when things get scary, that’s what people do.

To illustrate that point, I’ll leave you with this short scene from the movie, The Mist.

Take a breath,
Patrick

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What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

This past weekend, I returned once again to the little cabin near Caroline that my friends and I rent from time to time, this trip booked in early December.

With one eye on the forecast, my plan was to head up Thursday morning, with Jim and Al coming up later that day when they finished work.

The owner’s son, Wilson, called me Wednesday evening to ask me what I was driving. He said there was a large section of the road covered in water and he was concerned that it might be too deep for a car. I drive a Pontiac Vibe, a modern version of a station wagon.

I thanked him for the call, and then spent the rest of the evening dealing with all of the what-ifs flooding my overactive imagination. At the darkest end of the unlikely scenarios created by my obsessive psyche, I’d try to go through the water, underestimate its depth, water would splash up into the air intake, damage the engine, and I’d have to buy a new car.

An unrealistic and foolish prediction, I know, but when my mind goes exploring these dark places, it’s like trying to talk logic to a kid throwing a tantrum in a supermarket. The pin is out, the grenade thrown.

Never mind that I had already been presented with simple solutions. Wilson has said if I got there and it wasn’t passable, I could just come back to their house, load my stuff into their truck and get to the cabin that way. The other option, wait for Jim and Al to arrive, and ferry my stuff in their truck.

The silly thing about this whole scenario is that whenever life presents me with unexpected situations, I don’t curl up in the fetal position. I’ve never shrunk from a challenge, unable to cope.
I once stopped on the side of a highway in a winter storm in northern Alberta, the first responder to a scene where a guy had hit the guardrail and was lying on the ground outside of his car. Lucky for him, I was a new EMT at the time, and handled the situation without hesitation. As a student on my EMT practicum in Calgary in the early nineties, I once pushed my way through a room full of firefighters to help a dying AIDS patient, because everyone else seemed afraid to touch him.

During the 2013 flood, when we had to evacuate our home, Shonna and I dealt with it. No tears, no freaking out, we just worked the situation.

My track record of handling unexpected situations and difficult problems is pretty solid, especially if I don’t have a lot of time to think about it.
A few years ago, while with these same friends, we were driving up a familiar dirt road to a lake we frequent in BC. It can be challenging at times, but most often, slow and careful gets the job done. Almost to the lake, we stopped to admire the view and I heard a hissing sound. Sure enough, a flat tire.

I’d barely begun unloading my gear before Al and Jim were jacking up the car, and putting my spare donut on it.

To make sure we got our preferred spot, they took half of my stuff with them up to the lake and I had to drive back down the road to the highway and then to Canadian Tire in Invermere to get it changed, about three or four hours round trip.

Now, had you told me a day or two before that I was going to get a flat tire on the road up to the lake, my mind would have turned it into a disaster, throwing up dozens of unanswerable what-if questions. What part of the road? Is the rim damaged? Will I be able to get out of there? Is the rest of the car damaged? Was the spare good enough? Can you even drive on that road on a donut? Was it really worth the risk or should I just cancel?

Even knowing the unlikelihood, my mind goes straight to the worst case scenario in a futile attempt to control it.

The irony is that I don’t remember any other specifics from that weekend other than the fact that the weather was great and we had a good time. What I remember most is the flat tire, and it’s not a bad memory, it’s just another story to tell.

The whole thing was an inconvenience. I wasn’t even that put out by it. Had a nice lunch at a café while waiting for the car to be done and I got out of gathering and splitting wood, which is the first chore to be done on arriving at the lake.

All because I didn’t know about it in advance, so I couldn’t worry about it. Every year, I worry about that road and on dozens of trips, that’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Fast forward to this past weekend.

I woke up in a better frame of mind, determined to simply deal with whatever I was presented. I have winter boots and hiking boots, but never had the need for rubber boots. Given the warning call about the water, however, I stopped in Cochrane and picked up a pair.

Upon arriving at the house, Wilson met me and said it might not be as bad as he initially thought. I told him I’d head down and if it wasn’t passable, I’d come back.

On the road down to the cabin, I came to the water hazard across the road, put on my rubber boots and walked through. It was about three car lengths long, maybe six inches at the deepest. Sure, you wouldn’t want to race a car through that, but it certainly wasn’t impassable.

All of that worrying for nothing. Story of my life.

And still, in retrospect, I’m glad he called. With so much spring melt and what became three beautiful sunny days, anytime we were out of the cabin and off the deck, we had to wear rubber boots because there was water and mud everywhere. I would have destroyed my hiking boots or shoes. I even went for a hike down to the Clearwater River, which meant crossing a creek three times, something I could only do in the rubber boots.
It was a great weekend. Sunshine, lots of laughs, no politics, spent time with the horses, and got to hang with Jingles a little. Sure would have hated to have missed it over what amounted to little more than a big puddle.

This is the part where I’m supposed to say that the lesson learned is not to worry about every little thing, to let it go, to just take life as it comes, but the truth is that I’ve been presented with that lesson countless times and I still haven’t learned it. I know you can’t control everything and that it will always be the thing you DIDN’T think of that bites you in the ass.

Like angry beavers.
It’s just the way I’m wired, and as annoying as it might be to my friends and family, it’s nothing compared to how much it bothers me, because the noise of it never stops. But I’m always working on it. I still manage to face my worries, rather than hide from them. Feel the fear, and do it anyway.

I also know this…if everything always went according to plan, if nothing ever went wrong, if it was always sunshine and rainbows, it would be pretty damn boring.

And I’d have nothing to write about.

Cheers,
Patrick

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