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2001-07-18 | 2:45 p.m.

I am frightened of ordinary experience. I like to have just one major task or event to accomplish per day, thank you. I've been this way since I was a kid. I figure if you have one goal per day, then everything else you get done is like gravy. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. Sometimes I have to purposely remember to give myself credit for the extra things I do.

But as I was saying, I like to keep things to a dull roar. Or like a crackling fire in the fireplace: it's a fire, yes, but everything's under control. Nothing bad is going to happen. And now I have a big folder full of tasks that I'm supposed to do for the publishing house, and I'm terrified. I'm already discouraged by what people are going to think of me when I don't get it all done just right, and it hasn't even happened yet.

I remind myself of a pressure cooker. Not because I contain pressure that builds until it threatens to burst out of my corporal seams like a force of nature. No, I'm like a pressure cooker because when I'm in the thick of things, I can hear that telltale rattling-tinkling sound caused by the lid shuddering against the pot. It's almost the same sound you hear if you are inside during an earthquake, when all your glasses and plates are trembling together and tapping against the glass panes of a cabinet door. I really do associate that sound with myself when I am busy and fretting. It is my fretting sound.

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