So, reading Furiously Happy opened me up to reading more books about anxiety.
I decided to acknowledge anxiety as the uncool friend who never leaves you alone when I had my third kid. My first inkling that I was the nervous type was a day in my high school cafeteria when a guy friend suggested I was a little too uptight (*shrug* I probably was). But until now, besides the general work I’ve been doing to better understand what makes me tick and how I can cope better with my life, I had never done any reading specific to anxiety.
In typical over-achiever fashion, before I’d even finished Furiously Happy, I chose three MORE anxiety titles, for a total of four, and planned an anxiety book-reading binge. This whole time, I had a nagging feeling that an anxiety book binge was a bad idea.
When I first came across the term “gateway book,” it gave me great hope. My firstborn is not a reader. According to him, he doesn’t enjoy reading even a little. He does the bare minimum required of him for school. And I keep hoping that someday, a gateway book will break through to him and help him love reading.
As I mentioned last week, after reading Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson, on the recommendation of my friend, Janeen, I realized even people who love to read can find gateway books into new subjects or genres.
Since I’ve been writing about the books I’m reading, I’ve noticed a pattern where often, I start a book and am slow to engage with it. It has happened enough times in the past few months that I’m starting to think it’s a reflection of me and not the books.
Furiously Happy was no exception. I started reading, and at first, a lot of the humor fell flat. I kept thinking, “Why is she cursing at me? I don’t even know her!” But as I got to know Lawson through the book, the laughs came more easily, and my respect for her grew.
“So, depression and anxiety are like two sides of the same coin?” The Chaplain asked.
We were standing in the kitchen one morning. I’d just walked in the door after a night shift. It had been a busy night, partly because I had floated to another floor. I didn’t know where anything was (including my patients’ rooms), and had more patients in my assignment than we have on my own floor. I didn’t have the entry code for the supply room. It was like a field trip where all the doors were locked and there wasn’t a map. I didn’t mind it.
As usual, though, I was exhausted, and hadn’t had time for a real break. Instead, it had been five minutes here, five minutes there. On one of those five minute breaks, I’d come across a research article entitled “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” by Alison Wood Brooks, published in Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014. Sometimes journal articles bogs me down, but overall, I’m a fan of reading about research studies. (If you didn’t already know I was a nerd, there you are.)
I’m leaving for the Netherlands in about a month. I’ve already started packing. I recognize I will never have enough time all at once to pack as I’d like to. Instead, a few minutes here, 20 minutes there, is what is going to leave me feeling relaxed and ready the afternoon I hop onto my train headed to New York and the airport.
I’m packing a carry-on for the trip. The cost of checking a bag was obscene, and I like a challenge. Now I have two challenges: what to bring, and how to fit it all in my hiking backpack.
After doing a little internet research about what Europeans wear, one article advised not to bring a backpack. I am traveling alone and will be doing a lot of walking. I’m not doing it with a dinky wheeled suitcase, and I have a really nice hiking backpack from my 2014 Mt. Hood Trip. The backpack is German-made, so that has to count for something, right?
I haven’t been to Europe since I went on a missions/sightseeing trip to Austria, Hungary, and Romania between my sophomore and junior years in college. The trip was amazing, but, as one young man who came with us said with annoyance, “This is a missions trip! Not a musical.” And indeed, the group would burst into song at any time, on public transit, or just walking along the street.
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.
Matthew 6:28
When my senior prom was coming up, my mom took me, my favorite cousin, and my best friend Mac to a mall in Pennsylvania (where there isn’t any sales tax on clothing).
I don’t remember how many dresses I tried on, but I know that I would come out of the dressing room and if anyone on my team shook their heads “no” to the dress, I put it back on its hanger.
I still remember the looks on their faces as they unanimously voted yes to a navy blue number.
In a couple of weeks, I’m going to a semi-formal event.
I don’t have an entourage to take me to the mall or help me pick the right thing out of my own closet. And I really, really miss them.
