Sunday, May 21, 2006

Close your eyes and jump

I’m getting stressed about a major event next week, no make that this week. (Feel the stress increase with that tiny realization.)

Still, I have always been good in crises, whether they arise unexpectedly or are planned. It’s probably something about how I process adrenaline, although there are other aspects of life where that physical function does not serve my best interests. It is certainly something about how I plan. In detail. Obsessively.

After all the plans are laid out, there is—time permitting—a period of secondguessing, re-thinking, burrowing down into even more detail. This is the period when I wake up in the middle of the night with visions of disaster. (How will we hang the banner? Will all the participants show up? Will we all behave ourselves?)

There are so many ways we small humans struggle against physical limits of time and space. But here’s one for what I am grateful, that time marches forward to a tipping point, the blessed moment when all the planning has to be declared finished because it is time to perform. There are still problems to be solved, dance steps to re-choreograph on the fly, but the time for anxious re-thinking is past.

Showtime!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spooky!
"Close you eyes and jump" is precisely what I repeat, mantra-like to myself as I try to summon the courage to leave the house that has been home to me and my kids for 16 years, quit a well-paid job in the Rat Race and move to a new country...

"You have nothing to fear but fear itself"

Good Luck with your challenge!

Leslie Shelor said...

I second Julia's good luck!

Anonymous said...

So, how was it?
Did it go well?
ands you survived and are stronger?

Karen said...

Thanks, it went very well. Plans did not miss out anything really important, we were able to be flexible and gracious in the face of shifting requirements, all the players showed up and executed their parts with verve. It was fun.

I have slept for twelve hours straight and intend to play for at least two of the three weekend days!

Anonymous said...

Excellent! Well done...
Another success under your belt and I'm sure that you are all the stronger and wiser for it...
Now to bite my own bullet and buy a house in France....