2026.04.11 morning anxiety
I'm feeling unsettled today (I say, a full 40 minutes into having been "up" for the day).
One of the reasons I'm choosing to write is because it will hopefully help me settle my thoughts and emotions.
Orthodox Easter is tomorrow, but my mother and I were able to go to church for the Friday evening services. We're not religious, and not exceptionally faithful. My mother has said that she and my father wouldn't have gotten married in the church at all if my great grandmother hadn't still been alive at the time. My great-grandmother was very faithful, and had a close relationship with the church. Maybe I'll tell you about it some time.
But my mother's father was an engineer and a strict materialist, not at all interested in religion or God or any of that stuff. My father is similar, though of a generation with a greater interest in psychedelics, and other types of unconventional thinking. I got my first Tarot deck from my dad.
But we're Greek (on my mom's side) and so I grew up going to church on Easter. We haven't done it much in the last few years, and that's been okay, but I did kind of miss it. I love the "smells and bells" ritual of the church.
We also ran into several people we know, mostly Greeks we met when they were grad students at the university, and who have stuck around. That's the best part of going to church on Easter, in my opinion. It's about the community, including the community who don't go the rest of the year, but show up "when it counts," so to speak.
There's a virtual conference about HP Lovecraft and the presence and use of Mediterranean antiquity in his work that I attended yesterday and plan to attend the final sessions today as well.
I have a lot of things I want to say about all of that, but imagining trying to put any of my thoughts in order or words to paper is making me anxious.
I suspect all of this has something to do with the paper I have to write for one of my classes. Unlike much of the writing and the assignments I've been given in the accounting program I'm in, this one is pretty loosey-goosey and I think I forgot how much that stresses me out. I've become a big fan of rubric's and clear expectations. I used to hate them, but then I took some continuing education classes in graphic design, and having to really think about process and specs helped me understand the idea of the assignment. So now being told to do "whatever" is really frustrating and horrible because it doesn't give me anything to build on.
But regardless, I was kind of a wreck yesterday, and today it hasn't exactly dissipated, I still feel like something is chasing me, even though I'm sitting completely still, enjoying the sunshine.
I wish I knew what caused this particular psychosomatic response. It's a full fight-or-flight response stemming from.... Nothing at all. If I knew what was chasing me I would run away from it, or fight it, or if need be freeze in place and watch it come for me. But without the scary thing with a mouth full of teeth bearing down on me, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do will this nervous energy.
I didn't really want to wake up and get out of bed this morning, and I think its because I knew that this feeling was waiting for me as soon as I tried to do something other than remain purposefully still and maybe a little sleepy in my bed.
This hasn't helped very much, so I'm going to call it here. Hopefully I'll be able to shake this feeling and come back with something better. For me. This one isn't really for you.