What’s The Worst That Can Happen??

I struggle with whether I should be capitalizing the first letter of my articles of speech…The or the,etc.. I’d love some feedback from people are who are anal about English.

ANYWAY, hello, I’m back. I have been caught up in a whirlwind of work, school, visiting people, and traveling and I’m FRICKING POOPED. But not too pooped to talk to you EXCELLENT SOBER BLOG FOLK.

I have had some anxiety producing events recently. Since I no longer douse these feelings with cab, I must cope with them in another way. Avoidance is (obviously) the preferred method but seriously, how long can you really hide from this shit?

Most recently, (as in last night) was an incident that transpired at the concert I attended (Iron Maiden). When we arrived at the hotel in Tacoma WA we had a plan to park downtown in a garage and take the local light rail to and from the venue. But the hotel clerk quickly seduced us with the hotel’s free shuttle service. The fine print was that it would only be one-way since they stopped shuttling at 8pm, but she indicated that it would just be SUPER EASY to get a taxi back to the hotel, no problem.

For the first 20 minutes of the concert I stressed out about this. I couldn’t enjoy myself because I could think was, how are we going to get home? What if we can’t get a cab? Then blaming myself for having not been more prepared, the doing the whole thing over again. Finally I let it go: what’s the worst that could happen??

And I thoroughly and soberly enjoyed the show, and stayed to the end of the very last encore. And when we exited we calmly called a for a cab…

AND WE COULD NOT GET ONE.

I’ll bet you thought I was going to say, “See?? I got all worried for nothing.” This is not the case. Well, but wait….it actually it IS the case…

We ended up walking back to the hotel, at midnight, 3.7 miles, 90 minutes. Sucks, right? So if that’s the worst that could happen– it ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED. And no one died or lost a limb. And it didn’t rain (I guess that would be worser). And we got to the hotel at 1:30am and I whined to the front desk lady that we had to walk and she gave us some bagels. Which is entirely appropriate in situations such as these.

The next day we all agreed that it REALLY WASN’T A BAD walk and that we had gotten our 10,000+ steps in…for fitness and all.

In other news, I was recently descended upon by out-of-state visitors, kicking off the maiden (literally the Iron Maiden) voyage of the sewing/guest room. Apparently it was SATISFACTORY. So I’m pretty jazzed about that. I was a bit worried that the sofa bed might be too firm but turned out to be just right.

My guests are not drinkers per se, they are more of the “when in Rome” types. In this case, Rome was DRY AS A BONE.

So now I am getting ready to return to work tomorrow, after 5 days off. There are some pretty hairy events coming at work, I’ve been kind of STRESSING THE HELL OUT over them. But for fuck’s sake, it’s just work. And when I start to spin in a circle I will gently remind myself: what’s the worst that can happen?? At the end of the day, nothing is coming out of my pocket and as a government employee it would take a stick of dynamite to remove me from my job. If I fuck up, I’ll apologize and fix it. If I can’t fix it, I’ll call someone who can. I’ll ask for help. I’ll REACH OUT.

Am I going to drink over it? Never. Not an option. Not going to help. Not going to fix. Not going to feel better. NOT EVEN ON THE TABLE.

Before you pop your cork, take just a wee little minute to ask yourself: What’s the worst that can happen?

Ed Force One– SeaTac!!!