Tag Archives: Catastrophic Thinking

Bored

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I’m bored.

I know that’s a luxury most of the world can’t afford.  I’m working very part time.  I rent so I have no house projects, indoors or out.  I got super organized before I left to live in the UK in January so all my finances, paperwork, etc. is in order.  There’s no travel in my near future.  Socializing is limited.  It’s so hot that my cooking creativity is limited to salads, and there are only so many salads I can eat fast enough before they go off.  I no long shop for recreation, and I limit grocery shopping to every 10 days.

There’s always TV, reading, and online courses.  But for today I am just not into anything.  It will pass.  Everything does.  Tomorrow something will grab me.

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Yesterday I went for a bike ride without checking the weather first.  It was another hot and humid but beautiful day.  I rode three miles to Lake Phalen, an average sized Minnesota lake— about 200 acres.

There was a lush bee garden planted beside the lake.

Even the green slime on the water plays a role in creating loveliness, contrasting with the dark green trees and blue sky.

A mural on the bikeway.

La la la la la!  I was enjoying myself, dreamily tootling around the maze of paths, bridges, underpasses, and small lakes and streams adjoining Phalen.

Then the rain started, a few gentle drops.  “It’s only water,” I told myself.  I saw people running from the beach to their cars and wondered why they wouldn’t just wait it out.  Surely it wouldn’t last long, right?

I have an infinite ability to believe that, since it hasn’t rained for a week, it will never rain again.

The wind picked up and dark grey clouds swept in.  I biked away from the lake into a neighborhood and sheltered under a Maple.  The wind began to roar and small branches fell around me.  I was still fairly dry with my back up against the northwest side of the tree.  But then I wasn’t, and then the hail started.  Good thing I was wearing a bike helmet!

But my phone …. A year ago, as you may recall if you’ve been reading for a while, I dropped my phone in a toilet in Koyasan, Japan and it died.  An expensive lesson.  Lynn gave me a waterproof phone bag for my birthday.  Was I using it?  No.  I started to panic and whimper.  Why am I always so stupid?!  These are the kind of thoughts I revert to under duress, even though logically, I know that I am only stupid once in a while.

Next will be the lightening strike, I thought.  Just like me, to get struck by lightning during a global pandemic.  Another drama-infused go-to thought that I half believed and half laughed at through the water pouring down my face and washing sunscreen into my eyes.

I heard someone calling.  A resident across the street had spotted me and she invited me to wait out the storm on her screen porch.  Very kind.  She even gave me a baggie for my phone.  I feel bad today because I wasn’t wearing a mask and I told her during our distanced conversation I had “just” returned from the UK.  I wonder if, after I left, she realized that the UK has the second highest death toll in the world.  I should have mentioned I’d quarantined.  Oh well!

I headed home once the rain tapered off, but it burst back into a raging downpour when I was about a mile from home.  The wind was ferocious.  Branches were scattered all over the sidewalk and there were sections that were flooded.  It made for quite an obstacle course.

A car sped by and—purposely?—sent up a tidal wave of water that would have soaked me through if I hadn’t been already.  I laughed maniacally.  Nice try, bastard!

I got home.  My phone is fine.  I wasn’t struck by lightening.

Maybe it’s natural and okay to feel bored for one day.

Some other photos from my week, starting with a deer encounter.

Independence Day with the granddaughters.

Squirt gun bandito, aka my six-year-old nephew, on our weekly day out.

Bad Focus, Good Focus

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Last week’s post was a real downer. This week I’m feeling much lighter.  Why?  See below.  I know I will have down days; most of us do, but they will pass.

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I’ve been back from the UK for a month now.  In the last few days, I have started having flashbacks of my time there.  Well, “flashbacks” is too dramatic a word.  An example: I was sitting in my living room reading yesterday and suddenly I had the strongest image and sensations of being in the living room of “my” house in Oxford.  I could see the blue curtains, feel the breeze coming through the window, and noted the objects on the shelf above the telly.  This has happened a few times.

Then, yesterday in my yoga class, I had the feeling of floating above my own body during the ending meditation.  The instructor wasn’t doing anything different than she has in the last three or four years since I started taking classes with her.

Am I just really focused on the moment these days?  Maybe that’s why I feel less anxious and am having fewer catastrophic thoughts.

I haven’t been trying, but I hell, it’s summer.  I am fortunate to have the time, so I’ve been getting out for long bike rides and walks.  Here’s a view of Pig’s Eye Lake with a train in the foreground and the St Paul skyline way off in the distance.  I stood there for the longest time, waiting as the train slowly crawled toward the coupling yard.  I can hear the smashing sounds of the coupling at night in my house, two miles away.  I wanted to get the red Canadian Pacific Railroad car in the frame.  It’s not that exciting, after all, but the point is that I stood and did nothing but observe for a good 10 minutes—an eternity in our times.

Children help me stay in the moment.  Add nature and bubbles helps break the focus on generating worst case scenarios.

Being around children usually involves laughing.  I took my nephews for a bike ride.  The nine-year-old tried to do a trick and fell sideways.  It could have been disastrous, but he sprang up, and there was this message spray painted on the wall over his head.  “I guess lord Jesus saved me!” he joked.

Finding amusement, and time with friends, helps.  I found this cache of classic BBC sets that can be used for Zoom backgrounds and played around with them during the weekly Friday happy hour I join with UK friends.  Thanks to the time difference, they are drinking G&Ts while I drink herbal tea.

(That’s the interior of the Tardis from Dr. Who, in case you don’t know.)

Speaking of things that feel silly but are really good therapy, I do a couple of no-weight arm workouts every other day.  I don’t know if they are actually “toning” my arms, but something about waving my arms furiously for even five minutes makes me snap out of any funk I am in.

I’m brushing up on my Spanish using Duolingo, taking an Introduction to Classical Music course from Yale, and looking to add a birding course. And it’s all free!

All this leaves little space for worrying.

—

So I totally forgot that last week, I ended my depressing post with the promise to research why people think in terms of catastrophes.  The article that came up most frequently, oddly, was from Business Insider: What Catastrophizing Means and How to Stop It.

I was relieved to read, “Nobody is born a catastrophizer … Babies are not born catastrophizing… it’s a protective mechanism, because we think ‘if I think the worst, then when the worst doesn’t happen I’ll feel relieved.”

Whew, I had worried I was wired to worry.

Catastrophizing can become a habit, especially if you’ve had a bad experience that you didn’t see coming.  That makes sense.  Every person on earth has had that happen of late.

Catastrophic thoughts need to be deconstructed with logic.  If you can’t do it on your own, call a clear-thinking friend who can help you to untwist them—preferably a friend who will also laugh at you.