anxiety

anxiety: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome

Worry, worry, let it scurry.

I'm not sure where I heard this phrase first-- perhaps my Grandma, perhaps a Disney movie, both of which are big influences from my formative years. Regardless of the source, I wish the act were as simple as the phrase. It seems especially easy these days for me to go from 0 to 60 in less than a nano second; jumping to the completely worse and utterly most outrageous conclusion has become a true skill of mine.  It shouldn't be something that I'm good at, but I am and for surprisingly valid reasons.  And it sure shouldn't be something that the people I care most about have to deal with (sorry mom, sorry dad, sorry everyone I have ever dated), but lucky for them they get to sit there and try to tell me to "just breathe," when god knows this has and never will work.  Poor things.

Seems silly, but lately I've been using a tool called "the calm happy place."  When regulating breathing, counting, and rational thought fail me, I am to think of this place and it is supposed to ground me and bring me back to the present, away from these escalated, and quite frankly, ridiculous concerns of mine. It's sort of a classy way to say, "fuck you emotions!" So what's my clam happy place?  Well, I thought about it for a long time, but the one that works the best comes from a memory of clamming in the Puget Sound.  Muck-boots or weighters on, cold foggy air, tree-lined sky, early gray morning, eating a doughnut, pressing my booted toes firmly on the sand to see where each bugger has hunkered down and buried itself in the wet, murky water, sounds of light weaves crashing far off the shore, smell of salt and evergreen. This is my calm happy place.  Another one that works well is me skating on the smoothest and longest board walk ever in existence. Calm. Happy. Places.

Visit nataliedee.com!!

As a last hoorah, I will say that my emotional state has swung in vast angles of opposition over the past few years. Starting as an oak with branches rigid and stiff, ending as balsa wood, soft and weak, I am working to become a willow balanced, rooted, strong, but flexible, and just the perfect amount of tangled, complex, and messy.

So maybe it's less, "worry worry, let it scurry," and more, "worry worry, process it, react, calm down, be balanced."

Lol.

throw me a bone

throw me a bone: requesting encouragement, response, reward, reaction, or help

At first, I wasn't sure if I should title this post, "careful what you wish for" or "throw me a bone." And then these we delivered to my work...

thanks Josh!

I think it's safe to assume that sometimes, just sometimes I get thrown a super ultra magnificent bone, with the sweetest meat, and biggest proportions.

More on this later!

Update: So late late one night maybe a month ago I got this crazy whim to noodle on the internet, somehow I ended up on OkCupid, a free dating site, looking at a six two, adorable man's profile picture.  Said he was in the navy and I thought to myself, "Hmm. Guess I'll make a profile and see where this takes me." Mistake number one! Ha, I ended up talking to him (Navy guy) and a shit ton of other guys.  Damn near got 100 messages a day!!  So finally, I just picked the top ten and gave them all a first date.  Boy was that a crazy ride. Thai with Jackson, swing set with tall Mike, swimming with dimples Mike, lunch in Nampa with Chris, after practice chit chat with Jason, Friday night dinner with Peter, sushi with Van, Skype with Jarris, Harley ride with Seth, and last but certainly not least, breakfast at ihop with Josh.  Josh was the Navy guy I started this whole ordeal for, he ended up being the one I like most. Mistake number two :(  I quite fancy Josh, I do. I'm trying not to get too excited or make any expectations because so far we've spent a lot of time together and maybe things have moved a little too quickly. Dating someone new ha never given me this my anxiety before. Shrug.