No Worries

Huh.

I just wrote this really anxiety-ridden entry called "Worry," basically a (very) long list of all the stuff I'm worrying about this morning, from reasonable fears to really irrational ones. Probably the most depressing thing I've ever written for Tropism (with the possible exception of the Lonesome entry), and definitely the most whiny and self-pitying thing to ever appear on these pages-- that shrill whininess rather undercut the genuine human fear behind the entry, actually. Y'all would have read it and gotten pretty annoyed with me and wanted to give me a good slap.

I was going to post it anyway, of course. Full disclosure, that's my Tropism motto. Heh. As if.

But my computer just ate the entry. I posted it, I saved it, I went to check the page to make sure it had appeared properly... and there was nothing there. I backed up through my browser windows to get to the cached copy... and it wasn't there. The other files I'd edited this morning were present, but not that worrisome entry. All gone. Swallowed by the ether beast.

So I thought about re-writing it, but really, it was a purgative entry. I feel better now, a lot less dreadful. Not worried about the idiotic stuff, and even the reasonable anxieties aren't that bad. I doubt I could reproduce even the tone of the lost entry. I'd be too tempted to fill it with ironic, snide, self-deprecating asides. It'd become funny instead of raw and painful.

You're all probably better off without that entry, anyway. And yet, I do worry sometimes that Tropism is "the happy funtime" journal. I tend to be pretty bouncy and optimistic here. Which isn't bad-- I don't want to angst you guys out, and I'm pretty bouncy and optimistic in reality, too-- but it's not necessarily a true representation of my life, either. I have bad times. I experience pointless anxiety. I lay awake at night in fear. I feel stupid and like a fraud and shallow. I worry that I'm living my life as one stimulus-response after another. I want to make that stuff a part of Tropism, too... at least in a roughly equal proportion to how much those feelings appear in my life.

But I guess it's difficult to apply such calculations to my introspection.

Maybe the next angst-ridden entry won't vanish into nothingspace. You guys can read that one.