The Joys of Being Neurotic

I’m brainstorming. It’s a sight to behold, let me tell you. Notes are scattered in front of me, scribbled on Post-Its of varying sizes, looking important and schizophrenic. Monday 10:45, says one ... I didn’t do anything yesterday at 10:45, so I’m hoping it’s old. I doodle my name a lot, it seems, in all its incarnations. I doodle the baby’s potential names, especially ones I know I’ll never have the guts to saddle the kid with for real. Christmas shopping. One of these Post-Its has names and abbreviations of what I can only imagine were intended to be gift ideas, but I can’t imagine why I would be buying my 4-year-old nephew a Psk CXp bd. I need to get better with my shorthand. Mostly there are random numbers with dollar signs that make me the appropriate degree of nervous: 895 minus 654 equals 241 and even though I don’t know what that 241 is, it seems ominous, right? S: 866.25 with an exclamation point next to it! VBC 715 with a question mark? Baby care, afterschool care, yack! It’s important, too, not something you can just close your eyes and point to and hope for the best ...

I’m a planner. Not because I’m so all-fired organized (Post-Its everywhere attest) but because I worry if I don’t have a plan in place. I worry if I do have a plan in place, but less, and for different reasons. The having of the plan is A-Number-One-Important; the plan can be tweaked and adjusted, reframed and repositioned, but its bones don’t change and that brings me some measure of comfort. Right now there is no plan. Or actually there are several completely separate potential plans, with corollaries, and I’m stuck at the crux of where all the paths branch off, staring down one after the other with panicked indecision. Wishing someone would push me down one, any one, so I can claim PLAN IN PLACE, NO TAKE-BACKS and go on about my business.

So while I wait for something to click, for a decision to make itself (hasn’t happened in my 31 years of life but that’s not going to stop me from waiting), I’m going to throw myself into the things that are fairly controllable and don’t require much in the way of choice. Beginning the slow process of clearing out the office in preparation to transform it into the nursery. Reading about what’s happening inside my body from week to week. Boosting Alex’s burgeoning big brother ego. Working. Freelancing to fill in the holes because my goodness formula has gotten more expensive in the past four years! Hanging with people who make me laugh. Reading mindless fiction (confession: I’m halfway through my second reading of New Moon, yes I am, don't judge me). Writing mindless nonfiction, so that I’ll remember this time in my life, years down the line, when the decisions have all been made and paid and become woven into the fabric of How It Is.

Stop taunting me with your secrets, future.