Hey, ever wonder what's in my brain?

You know sometimes, when you google "pain on right side" and that leads you to google "ovarian cancer" and of course, everything points to you having it, I mean, that pain DOES feel like you imagine a tumor would, and you spend a lot of time imagining having to leave behind your sweet husband and family and friends and you know that if you were given just a few more years, you'd manage to make something of yourself, too, and you make it in to work but barely but you just spend the whole day reading cancer blogs and making increasingly frequent coffee runs and this is every day for years (and somehow no one calls you on it at work)?

No?

Baffling anxiety was, for the longest time, like, my way of being in my world. I don't really know what ignited it, though I do know what fuled it - bird flu was a real boon for my crazy, boyoboy. And then, it stopped, if not all-of-a-sudden, almost. I wish I could take credit for it stopping, and I am sure there is some sort of cognitive trick I played on myself, but it wasn't a conscious effort, that's for sure. I feel like I was so terribly anxious my brain could not deal with it own crap anymore and just cut it out. Which is not really a reliable way of expelling the nutso, since letting the nutso run its course probably could just as easily wind up with you living in a lead-lined basement and muttering to yourself.

Haz(z)ard recently said to me "you know what I like about you?" (shiny hair? cutely bad singing voice?) "I like that you don't really speculate. You have hopes and all, but you don't really predict things. You would be a terrible pundit."* I took this as a real compliment, first because who wants to be a good pundit, second because it aligned with something I am learning to value in myself - the fact that I do not really value control. I am sort of an accidental Buddhist, eager to interact with the feedback loops I inhabit in what I believe are positive ways and yet unable to emotionally invest in the outcomes of my actions. Reconciling myself with this tendancy, learing to see it as a kind of wisdom, has been a big feature of my separation from my anxieties. This whole process, and this whole sort of acceptance has been more pronounced in my dealing with Big Problems than in my negotiating the fine grain of my days and years, and I am still able to get unduly worked up about when the pharmacy will close or whether I will like school or if Haz(z)ard is conducting his job search exactly as I wish he would, and I suspect that terms of how one inhabits the universe/how it inhabits one, those actually ARE the big problems.

That sounds terrible. That sounds like my experience in school > humanitarian crises. Let me rephrase. To the extent that I feel like a lot of this whole business is about interacting with unknowable loops, and not about purposefully creating results, I have a suspicion that interacting with oneself/family is creating one's own guide for interacting beyond.

I have been thinking about taking a class on non-accidental Buddhism. Am hesitant bc I am a giant yuppie douche already. Hesitance mitigated by fact that a) whatever, b) large part of the appeal is fat cute Buddhas who look a lot like a friend of mine who I venerate anyway.

*This was in response to a conversation I had with his father that was basically him all "It is folly to support anyone but Hillary bc. she is strongest candidate," and me being like "I dunno, whatever, sure, I still hope Gore will run,** and am attached to him even if he does not. That is the extent of my beliefs about the primaries."

**I relate to him. I think he knows what's what with feedback loops. Plus, he stepped on my foot once and now we are bound together in the eternal locus.