Worrying about nothing


I felt very glum this evening as I walked home. As we approach the end of the third quarter of this year, I look back and worry that I haven’t achieved anything.

Which is the kind of statement that should have my wife hitting me around the head with a sock full of batteries, in an attempt to knock some sense into me.

I mean, it’s not like we haven’t had a baby, and moved house, and I’ve had a promotion, and travelled to two different continents, and piloted a boat, and caught some fish, is it?

The trouble is, the grass is always greener on the other side. I can peer across the internet and find people younger than me, who have much more than me. And I know that having lots of stuff won’t make me happy, and I know that comparing myself to other people is a stupid, stupid thing to do, and so it’s even more aggravating when I do something stupid like that. I should know by now that just because somebody I went to school with does all the electrical work on Christopher Nolan’s movies, that takes nothing away from the validity of my life. And I know that my life has been pretty charmed thus far – I have little to worry about, and have experienced nothing in the way of hardship.

And yet still I get down in the dumps. Why is this?

Well, I’ve hardly had any exercise in the last two months. That’s one of those things where a day or two without running are nothing to worry about, but then before you know it you haven’t run for weeks, and your legs are strangely sore because they haven’t done any real work, and the little endorphin rush you had from wearing skimpy shorts and a fluorescent vest is not even a faded memory.

I know it won’t be long before my children go to bed easily and I can sneak out to the track. But there’s a voice in my head telling me that it won’t be til I’m far too old, and I’ll never reach my potential for how far and fast I could have run, and everything is a disaster. Which is a daft, daft thought to have flitting through my head.

On the other hand, when you think about the work I’ve personally put into having a baby, it’s not really that much. The bulk of the labour has been carried out by the female part of the workforce. Like any good manager, most of it I delegated – I was present at the start of the project, then wandered back in at the end. And I guess at work, as I move away from being young and incredibly focussed on something I’m good at, to managing people that are good at things, the nervousness and worry that I should still be doing those things, rather than doing what I should be doing (managing people) leaves me worried that I’m doing nothing at all.

So I worry, and then I worry that at some point I’ll make La Serpiente worry, and that makes me worry. Perhaps I didn’t properly internalise the lesson of Mr Worry when I read it to her.


4 responses to “Worrying about nothing”

    • He directed the most recent Batman films, Memento, The Prestige – basically, blockbusters interspersed with arty stuff

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