I Don’t Want this to be About What It’s Going to be About. (hint: Rhymes with Shmangziety)
Includes an Anxiety-Lessening Guided Meditation I found!
I think the thing that has taken me the longest to learn about life is that there is no “right” or “wrong” answer—generally speaking, I mean. Obviously, looking at Ted Kaczynski as a life example to follow, or looking to books about Ted Bundy for dating advice, or voting Republican are definitely wrong answers. In every day life, though, the vast majority of our decisions are not relevant in substantive ways.
Should I check the mail box now? Or is it too early to check? Should I vacuum today or tomorrow? Should I eat these chips or find a more healthy snack?
Yet these are often the decisions we have the most trouble with. OK, well, they’re the decisions I have the most trouble with and they’re the ones I care about the least.
What’s Worse are the Decisions I Hate to Make
The decisions I hate the most are often just as mundane. “Should I spend three hours (or potentially longer) learning how to use this new app I am hoping will streamline my workflow?” Another one: “How long should I spend troubleshooting this stupid tech problem? Many hours or no time at all?” A third, just to avoid violating the Rule of Threes: Should I drop everything I am doing to dust or dust next week, or never dust again in my life?”
What about When We aren’t Allowed to Decide?
Meanwhile, the things I wish we could make our own decisions about are usually things we have no say in. Abortion comes to mind first—at least for women in states that have outlawed it. But immediately after that, jury duty springs into my head. It’s been on my mind a lot lately thanks to me getting a jury summons recently. In fact, at some point today, I have to call a courthouse in downtown Manhattan (I live very uptown) and see if they still need me to come in tomorrow morning.
In most US states, as far as I know, jury duty is a legal requirement until you’re 65. If you don’t show up for it you could get fined thousands of dollars. This is hilarious to me because it’s often referred to as a “civic duty,” just like voting is. Only when you don’t vote, you don’t get fined thousands of dollars. Maybe jury duty could be treated similarly?
I get that we need jurors to make the system work, but why can’t there just be professional jurors? Or at the very least, make it worth our while. $40 a day? Are you kidding me? I used to make half that in an hour. So, we give up our lives, typically, for up to two weeks and all we get is $400? Yes, yes, the justice system is important but so are the lives we’ve built for ourselves.
At least it’ll be a fun escape from my every day life…? (Not really)
Because I am quite a control freak, self-employed (and my boss does not pay me well), and always alternating between multiple projects, on top of maintaining an almost daily exercise routine (exercise becomes more and more important the older you get), I am filled with anxiety over this stupid jury duty requirement. It’s going to totally disrupt everything I have going on. It’s not like these “life flows” (for lack of a better phrase) were easy to get going. It’s taken me years to find a series of workflows that allow me to be actually productive and this week I may need to drop all of it for who knows how long.
I know, just call me Whiney McWhinerman. It’s only jury duty, right? What’s the big deal?
Well, if all the things I’ve described above, including disrupting my life flow, aren’t enough for you, this is the Southern District of New York that I got a summons from. This is a federal court. They allow you to bring ONE phone to the courthouse and you cannot keep it with you while inside said courthouse. No other electronics allowed.
NO OTHER ELECTRONICS ALLOWED.
It’s 2023. ¯\(ツ)/¯
PLUS: I am a guy who brings his phone to the toilet. I keep an extra folding phone with me when I travel so I can read digital comics or ebooks on the go. This folding phone of mine opens to the screen size of an iPad Mini and allows me to draw on the go, too. So if I have to go in on Monday, I’ll just start talking to people in single syllable grunts because I will feel like a literal cave man.
I think it’ll be the first time I’ve been completely out of touch for this long since the 90s.
I’d say “I’ll make the best of it,” but I I have to be there at 8:30 AM.
I’M AN ARTIST DAMMIT! And more importantly, a night person. My circadian rhythm pretty much guarantees that my brain is not bootable before 9 AM.
And I have tickets for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny screening on Thursday—a screening I won’t be able to make if I am stuck in some jury box.
See what I meant about the title of this piece? I wanted to write something more fun and interesting (and shorter) but here I am feeling sorry for myself.
What About the Shmangziety, Pete?
This is the worst part of the jury duty thing.
I think, because I am keenly aware of the years of work I put in on these flows of mine, my anxiety is freaking out about having to show up for jury duty. I keep telling myself that I will survive, but my anxiety. does. not. care.
It never does. I was in a Trader Joe’s once and had a completely internal anxiety attack. It was super crowded (I usually don’t mind crowds). I turned to my wife and said something like “No. This is no good. I can’t do this.”
My wife is awesome and was super calm, understanding immediately what was going on with me despite me being calm, externally. She just said “What do you need?”
“To not be in this space.” With that, we went outside the store and I was able to let the attack play itself out inside my head (lots of deep breaths and staring at empty parts of the sidewalk, iirc*). We put off the TJs trip for another day.
Anxiety is the Worst Kind of Choice-less Experience
One time I was visiting my wife on a cruise ship she was working on and I found myself sitting in a night club by myself surrounded by people I did not know and it was not good. I felt like I wanted throw myself overboard. I got out of the night club immediately and… I honestly don’t remember what I did—probably got a giant mug of beer.
The Good News: I Found a Meditation that Helped!
That’s right! I found a guided meditation that actually helped me deal with the recurring anxiety I’ve been feeling nearly constantly over the past week or so… here’s the link if you want to try it. Listen to it here:
Or on the Insight Timer app, available for free on iOS and Android. This isn’t a sponsored post—the app and the meditation are free.
There’s a bunch of “spiritualism” stuff in there that I tend to not pay attention to, but what this guided meditation does is have you focus on the anxiety for a bit, rate it from 1-10 and then think of all the great people you’ve known and experiences you’ve had—just jam your mind with them. Picture the faces, remember those past experiences for a few minutes. Essentially, you are overpowering the anxiety. Then, when you focus on the anxiety again, ideally, it will feel much more weak. Rate it again and, hopefully, it will be lower. I had to listen to it three times to get it down to 2 or 3. But that’s huge compared to the 8 or 9 I was at.
I’m sure the anxiety will come back as I get closer to actually calling the courthouse, but I’ll just have to listen to this meditation again! (And again!)
I know I’ll survive. Life’s constant flow of distractions and disruptions and anxiety attacks gets pretty tired, though, doesn’t it?
“iiwii,” as my mom likes to say.
Also Known As: “it is what it is”.
I knew this would turn into a post about my anxiety.
Sorry. I promise to be more positive next time.
Have a great week!
*If I Recall Correctly