Keeping My Wits About Me

I’ve been back home now for several days and finally falling back into the predictable daily routines that make my life work. The only thing missing has been writing, this being the first couple of sentences I’ve written in over a week. The book I’m working on has been lying dormant for over a month, the last creative flash happening one of the first nights we were at Fernwood Cottage. It is a rare occurrence when I have nothing in my head to write about.

I have a few things on the schedule this week that have caused me no small amount of anxiety, tomorrow’s doctor’s appointment, and this book reading Zoom event I have Thursday at noon. I was told by my publisher that I had been selected, along with two other new authors, to read a selection of my choosing on a Zoom call that will have in its audience many other authors, plus any friends who happened to register for the event. I am given 15 minutes to read, followed by the other two authors. Then there will be a Q and A from anyone in the audience, all of whom will be invisible to me. I was nervous enough doing this live in front of 130 people who I love at my book launch party. This will be different because most of those listening will be strangers. Of course, playing along in the background like bad elevator music are the wild gyrations of world equity markets, and the Shakespearian tragedy of the 2024 Presidential election.

Of the three anxiety-producers listed above, the easiest to deal with is the Zoom Reading. I mean, who cares? I’m a decent reader and I’m proud of the story. What’s the problem? Nothing really. If somebody asks a negative question, I have a pretty good track record of being fast on my feet and my capacity for pithy snark is basically unchallenged at this point.

As far as the Presidential election is concerned, I have resigned all previous political affiliations permanently in recent years. I’ve done my bit. It’s time for someone else to lose sleep over politics. And the stock market is best known for acting out in this way. It has a long history of histrionics. This too will pass. These two things—the stock market and politics—are one and two on the list of things I have no power to change.

The doctor’s appointment is another thing all together. They are the one place I go where my IQ drops 50 points as soon as the doctor walks in the examining room. I can’t half remember what I’m even there for. I get quiet and apprehensive and oddly passive. When he or she speaks to me it sounds like the parents in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Then my ability to remember any single thing he or she says vanishes as soon as I reach the parking lot. Consequently, Pam has instructed me to write all of my symptoms down, along with everything I can remember about them ahead of time, then come up with a list of questions to ask, so I don’t sit there, mute as the dead like some slack-jawed ignoramus. But I suppose Pam is right when she says that this is what life is like when you reach a certain age. You have to learn how to manage good working relationships with a whole host of physicians. Part of how you do this is keeping your wits about you when you’re in small rooms with them. 

I’m working on it.