This is going to be a short one because the last one was just a week ago, and I also don’t have much time before my flight boards. I did have some low-key drama getting to the airport. Getting ubers in my college town of Amherst can be tricky, so I was monitoring waiting times to order an Uber to the coach stop. As luck would have it, the waiting time went from 5 minutes a few minutes before I ordered my Uber to nearly 20 minutes when I did. I waited for a few minutes but no Uber driver would accept my ride. Luckily, a bus was leaving at around that time so I cancelled my Uber and I shuffled towards my Uber with my luggage. However, just as I was reaching the bus stop, I realised that I had forgotten my wallet at home. So I had to dump my luggage (luckily, Amherst is safe and small so no one would think an abandoned suitcase is a bomb) and run home. I got back just in time to see the bus pull away. I had resigned myself to getting an Uber all the way to the airport, which is a 2-hour drive when I decided to check the app again. In another twist of fate, an Uber driver accepted my ride, and I reached the stop well before time as my coach was late. Then, on the coach, my stove anxiety kicked in. When I leave the house for a trip I often start feeling anxious about whether I turned the stove off. Actually, this time it started with anxiety about whether I had turned off. I realise its completely irrational as I remember hearing the lick of the thermostat as I was putting my shoes on and pulling the plug out of the socket. But, then I remember hearing another click and also remember thinking “Why is it still clicking if its off?”. And doing nothing about it. Then, I also started to wonder whether I had turned the stove off. I have enough experience of anxiety to know that feeding it, fuels it. I also knew that the anxiety would die down automatically in a few days, even if I got short stabs of it during my long trip. On a previous short trip when I lived in England, I had a similar stove-anxiety attack, but that time I could do nothing about it because I lived alone. This time, all I had to do was mail or call the building management, so I did that, even though I realised that I couldn’t do this every time. So, I will have to make provisions to alleviate my stove anxiety like setting a phone reminder or leaving post-it notes to check the stove before I leave. I have enough of experience of anxiety to know that it has to be managed, not fought all the time.
This has turned into a blog about anxiety, because I don’t
have much to say. I am looking forward to my time in Qatar and India, and I
have already written about my trepidation about the year ahead.
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