Sunday night was a horrible bout with the fear monster--about money, about the future, about forever being behind on just about everything, everyone around me dying and being unable to stop it. It this swirling, descending about of horror and it was gone by Monday afternoon, but it took me by surprise and has made it a weird week full of manic conversations in which I am crying for no good reason. Which is to say it is December again, and December will always bring it's December ways. In no way is this as bad as some years---1997 and 2003 were particular doozies, and at least I am not having weird cold weather induced panic attacks like last winter, but it's a slippery little thing and weedles it's way in even when I think am doing okay.
I was discussing with a friend who assured me that every single person our age is having these same conversations, and if I wasn't certain a huge part of it was just winter (and now without even the usual holiday happiness to look forward to.) I'd venture it was a general coming into middle age malaise. I always said I had avoided my mid-life crises by making sure I was always doing exactly what I wanted with my time and energies and not falling into certain societal expectation traps..all well and good, except that even avoiding some things, others come looking for you nevertheless. You can do everything you can to make the best choices, but invevitable things like losing parents or age or sickness will still come round for you and eventually knock you on your ass. So you find yourself crying at your desk at work and trying to explain why things are upsetting, not because anything out of the usual is just wrong, but that irrational fear that things WILL go wrong, that bad, that worse things, WILL happen, even if everything is totally kosher now.
And this is where I don't know where my particular kind of crazy intersects with just general stress and life patterns. All the what if seem terrible creatures sometimes, and I usually am good at fending them off or dealing with them, but they are just extra bitey in the winter when even the landscape outside seems inhospitable to just living.
Regardless, things go on. Other things come to a close. We are in the last few days of the semester, and I am staring down a week or so off around the holiday to rest up. (or spend unlimited time obsessing about the worst, which could also happen.) We've started planning our spring activities (there is a peek at our focus topic below) and it's a nice distraction to begin plotting out the details for that. I am also plotting a couple unrelated lit-oriented things coming around the bend.
The one thing I do feel in control of is writing projects. I finalized the last draft and gathered my blurbs and sent them yesterday to Black Lawrence. The new Tiny Letter project is going swimmingly, as are some new pieces for the poet's zodiac. Over the break, I'll be doing some editing on things that need some more work, but if 2018 gave me anything at all, it was getting a lot of stuff down on the page.
