Sleep, Horseface: Sleep

And I've been doing some more Deep Thinking about fear, my favorite subject.  Actually, I've been thinking about anxiety.  Fear I have begun to understand in my sobriety.  It's a real thing, and sometimes it's justified.  I used to drive a car fast when I was drunk or choke down a mix of different kinds of drugs or put myself in harm's way, dangerous neighborhoods and the like.  I should have been afraid when I was doing that stuff.  But it's true that sometimes it's just a case of me battling forces that are trying to stymie my overly large instincts, too.

Anxiety seems to be the fear that something unlikely and particularly awful is going to happen.  Anxiety is fear's deranged, psychotic little sister.  I can't see that anxiety does me any good at all.  It makes me fear things that are implausible.  At least when I was mixing drugs I had something real to be afraid of, not termites and monsters.

I'm back in the Old City right now, battling jet lag and my own questionable behavior.  Funny how I really get upset at people when they start nosing around in my business when my business happens to be a little shady.  Right now in my work life I'm behaving in a way that's questionable.  It could go either way.  A person could make a good case pro or con, justified or no, about my behavior.  Regrettably, I'm only responsible for my own behavior, which in my own mind is questionable right now, and that's the only mind that's important to me.  I'm leading people to believe things they wouldn't be happy to know are untrue.  I can justify lying when I believe it's justified, or when I'm not actually saying things that are verifiably untrue.  If I dance and obfuscate and you believe something that is false, sometimes I can live with it.  Not often and it's not easy but it has been done.

I'm anxious about 3 things right now.  One of them I can't do anything about; one I shouldn't even be thinking about because it is so not a problem; and one is an old standby, an old mostly irrational fear that I come back to over and over again.  If there's nothing happening to me that's upsetting, I have some tried and true topics that I can access.

And then, being a good alcoholic, I can't come back and take my time doing what I need to do.  I arrived at my hotel last night at about 2AM and had to get up 3 hours later to make a 2 hour drive in the rain, in the dark, in the night.  I was the deranged little sister this morning.  It's no wonder my temper was short and my worry scanner was picking up all kinds of weird transmissions.

I need to go to bed, and sleep a deep sleep.