Worry

Worrying is a skill I have honed and crafted with precision.  It is one of the more unfortunate skills I have developed.  I have tried to think back to when I started to worry.  In elementary school any anxiety I experienced was very specific and short lived.  In middle school the aspects of my life started to weave together and so the complexity of my worrying increased.  If someone picked on me at school I started to wonder if my friends at dance thought those things as well.  If I became fixated on something for example liking a boy or wanting to improve at a skill like dance or spelling the thoughts around those things became more all-consuming. 

By high school I was becoming quite adept at worrying.  I have always had notoriously high expectations for myself.  Admittedly I also tend to have high expectations of friends and family as well.  The combination of hormones, high expectations, and increased time commitments were a trifecta for creating a stress monster.  Over time I got better at managing the stress but throughout high school it became almost a constant presence in my life.  College was similar.  The more flexible class schedule certainly helped but I was keenly aware that my assignments, GPA, and performance were a lot more significant to my future.  Kyle often teases me that I took myself entire too seriously in college, for example I never missed a single class until my second semester of my senior year.  While I don’t fully disagree I think my undergraduate GPA demonstrates my commitment to excellence.  It was also very helpful when securing my internships and ultimately my first full time job.

After graduating and starting my first full time job I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was to have a salary that vastly exceeded what I made previously at hourly jobs.  Those feelings were very quickly mixed with the realization of how expensive it is to be fully financially independent.  Around this same time I realized getting a job was only the first step in a long chain of events involved in building a career.  As Kyle and I searched for our first home I found there were whole new categories of things to worry about that I had never even considered before.  Just for good measure, add a planning a wedding into the mix.

I will say things in my life are much more stable now and that has helped dramatically.  I still stress out when planning for things like tuition payments several times a year, major purchases like a new car/appliance, unexpected expenses, and regular things like filing taxes but I seem to have developed better stress management skills.  When I feel myself becoming overwhelmed I try and take a step back to refocus.  I try and keep things in perspective.  I have an amazing God, a loving husband, I have a roof over my head, and I have an excellent support system in my family and friends.  I am also trying to learn to just let some things go.  My mom emailed me this quote last week and it really reflects where I'd like to grow towards in how I handle stress.

"Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities
no doubt creep in;
forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day;
you shall begin it serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered
by your old nonsense.

This day is all that is
good and fair.
It is too dear,
with its hopes and
invitations
to waste a moment on
yesterdays."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson