Ain't Life Grand?

In case you haven't noticed, I don't write when all is not right in my world. I prefer to live in la la land...where everything is happy and nice. I don't like documenting the myriad moments and events that don't fall either into the parameters of my happy little illusions, or into the category of funky fantasmatism.

So I have resurfaced, since today is happy, funky and fantasmagorical.

I've been dwelling in an anxiety-ridden state for a couple of days. Make that several days. I had my first "real" presentation today, demonstrating a new piece of software for my peers. I was freakin nervous, man! I realized last night that I've been piling on so much significance, weight and importance on my job, which has translated into lacing myself up in a straightjacket of performance fear. Having money issues the last couple of months has added to the pressure, because I MUST succeed in my job in order to keep my life from falling over the proverbial cliff into actual destitution. Somehow all of that melded together in my mind and body to equal the belief that unless I gave the most stellar, thorough and scintillating presentation of this piece of software this morning, my life in Austin as I know and love it would be unrecoverably destroyed.

Yesterday, on 3 hours of sleep, I had one of the most trying days of the year. I'll spare you most of those details. After work & dinner I took a laptop home so I could work on my presentation. When I was finally ready to settle down and go to it, I couldn't log in to the bloody bugger. Left an accusatory-in-tone message for one of my coworkers, who had very kindly set the bleeding laptop up for me, at 10:00pm. "Umm. Why can't I log in?" Immediately after I hung up, I realized I actually know the admin log in and that's what I am supposed to use, since that login gives me God powers and is thus far superior to my own login. So I text message my coworker. "Oops! Sorry...just remembered admin...iou a coke!" Of course, he got the text message before my voicemail, so he was highly befuddled and called me back; I was forced to explain myself. Since the whole day was a series of diabolical stress tests, this little scenario did not assist with my anxiety issue. At that point I did what any sane person would do: popped an Ambien, powered down the laptop and went to sleep.

I'm going to have to remember this technique because from the first moment of my awareness everything about my day has been quite lovely. Anxiety gone, I drove to work in a day fecund with glorious promise (it's 80° and blue skies in Austin today, folks). I got to work early and received a silly little message from a specifically yummy and goofy person. Mighty encouraging. Then I calmly organized my thoughts and materials, setup the conference room and breezed through my presentation with confidence and humor. Immediately sensed my tech cred rise among my peers. Jovially lunched with said peers at groovy noodle place. (Did I mention the weather here?!?! Just the walk was edifying.) Leisurely enjoyed espresso and vivifying conversation in even groovier coffee joint. Returned to desk and began to blog.

Oh, yeah, and the money issue that has been stressing me out was alleviated greatly. This morning I deposited a little rent checkie from my roommate and remembered why I made that semi-sacrificial business deal.

It's grand, people, it really is grand.