A Brief Attack of Irrelevance

Somewhere around Saturday evening I had an attack of irrelevance.

It started simply enough, driving along as I was coming home from a Saturday of work in preparation for an important company project.  It was a productive day and I left feeling as if I had done everything I could possibly do to prepare for the event.

But then as I drove along, I began to get cranky.

Suddenly visions of possible events - all lousy ones - filled my head.  The extra preparation which would go unnoticed if things went well.  The extra blame that would be heaped up if things did not go so well.  The lack of impact on my year end review because of prejudgements others had made.  The fact that I was doing this at all when, in the course of events, it might make no difference at all.

By the time I had gotten halfway home, most of my productive feeling was gone.

I had to consciously pull myself back from this brink of irrelevance.  I was predicting events that I had no evidence would actually come to pass. The reality, as I had to remind myself, was that the possibility of everything that I had categorized did have the potential of coming true - but so did the potential of things going right as well.  I would know that no more than I would know that the first set of things I saw coming true would happen.  I had done what I could, made my preparations.  Now I would simply have to live out the event.

I finished the ride home in a better mood - perhaps not quite the mood I had started out in but certainly not the mood I had let myself wander into either.  It was simply a matter of realizing my perspective - and being willing to talk myself back out of what I had talked myself in to.