Anxious

Last week I noticed one day that I was feeling really anxious.  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t having an anxiety attack, at least as I have heard them described.  But I can report that I felt inexplicably, well, I guess you could say, nervous. 

I first noticed this anxiety when I had a few quiet moments to pull out a library book I was just about finished reading.  I noticed: I couldn’t sit still; my stomach was in knots, my thoughts racing.

Finally I stopped what I was doing and wondered to myself about what was going on—what could be upsetting me so much?  Was there something at church that I had neglected to take care of?  Did I forget some critical school form that was “due today or I will get in really big trouble?”  Did I leave the water on somewhere?

I took a little while but I finally realized the problem.  I was almost finished with my library book, it’s true . . . and I didn’t have another book lined up to read.

Nothing on the bookshelf, nothing on my nightstand, nothing in my bag.

This, friends, is a truly horrible state of affairs from my perspective and certainly ample cause for a fair level of anxiety.  See, when all is well with my world, I have a safe number of carefully chosen books lined up and ready to read.  Usually they come from the library, where I’ve spent substantial time hunting for titles on my wish list or puzzling over whether the librarian’s choice is really worth my time, then internally debating the pros and cons of my selections based on the reality of this week’s schedule. 

(Believe me, this is an extremely complicated and delicate reasoning process.)

So you can see that for me to find myself almost at the end of a good read with nothing on the horizon . . . well just typing that makes me breathe a little faster.

Thank goodness the stars aligned that day and not was the library open but I had a little window of time to pay a visit.  I came home later that day with an armload of books, all carefully vetted, and now stacked reassuringly next to my bed.

Whew.