Crazy From the Heat...

As I've said in this space before, I hate the heat.  I like sweater weather vs. sweating weather, being able to snuggle up in a cozy blanket.  I don't like sweating or being uncomfortable, which is probably another reason that I'm not such a fan of the exercising, although I know it's a necessary evil.  On that front, I'm trying to motivate myself by taking some sessions with an amazing trainer and Nike athlete, Ary Nunez, who, among many other people, has trained Rihanna.  I will never look like Rihanna, nor should I, but it would be nice to push myself and see what I can do.  Stay tuned on that.

Back to the heat.

The extreme heat here in New York - and many other places - this week gave me an "ah-ha" moment of Oprah proportions.  I realized the main reason I hate the summer and the heat is that it's something beyond my control, and we all know how much I like and need control.  The heat makes me feel like I can't breathe and that I can't escape -- there's no way out.  Unlike the cold, where I can put on as many layers as I need to, in heat, you can only go so far in cooling yourself down.  I mean, I don't look like Rihanna so I can't get away with parading down Wall Street naked.  I'm trapped.

So this week I felt my anxiety ramping up with each degree.  I kept watching the weather and the giant LCD screen out my work window that shows the temperature.  Tick, tick, tick.  89, 93, 97.  The media doesn't help - making it sound like a heatpocalypse, that I'll burst into flames as soon as I step outside.  So I started doing what I like to do -- trying to control what I could.  I came up with a contingency plan should my A/C break.  I took cabs to and from work.  I mega hydrated -- you know because the grueling work I do SITTING AT A DESK INSIDE AIR CONDITIONING --puts me at high risk for heat stroke...

I made all kinds of small talk about the weather with strangers, including the dreaded, "Hot enough for you?" which normally would make me want to smack someone.   I worried about those working outside.  Worrying about other people helps me deal with my own anxiety -- like a few weeks ago, when, mid panic attack, I met up with a friend who was having a panic attack too.  Somehow my own anxiety seemed far away as I tried to help talk him down from the ledge.

But I didn't just worry about the heat.  I worried about my health.  I worried about getting the bugs that are going around the office making everyone sick.  I worried about the actual bug I found on the floor of my apartment -- so much so that I actually took a photo of it and sent it for review to make sure it wasn't anything too nefarious, i.e. a bedbug.  Which then made me start worrying about having them -- and what I'd do/how I'd handle it.  That kept me awake the entire night because mentally I started putting the wheels in motion, having imaginary conversations, cancelling imaginary plans to "take care of the problem."   A game plan, so to speak, because that's what I do best.  And good game plans take time to build, i.e. an entire night awake.

Intellectually I know all of the obsessing is ridiculous.  As my mother said when I called her to freak out, "If any of these things happen, they can be fixed.  These are fixable problems.  The only thing that can't be fixed is death."

Great, so now I'm afraid of dying.  Only not so much.  I reckon if I die, I die, and I won't know about it.  Even if I die in an embarrassing way, that's my family and friends' problem -- they'll be the ones who will have to retell the story.  "It grieves me to talk about it, but yes, it did involve Barry Manilow, a slot machine, a little person, and the over-consumption of Diet Coke, and yes, it's true, she wasn't wearing clean underwear.  But please no more questions."

(Now that's a lie.  I'd never wear dirty underwear.  Defend my good name.)

A few weeks ago I had a dream with ALL of the Kardashians -- even Rob, Bruce Jenner, Lamar Odom, and Scott Disick.  When the boys show up, you know that it's serious.  In said dream, the Kardashian ladies were trying to convince me that I need medication for my anxiety.  Maybe they're right.  I lost interest in what they were saying when Dionne Warwick appeared, reclining on a chaise lounge.  You'd think that, given her psychic connections, I might have gone up to Dionne and asked her for some advice, you know, "Dionne, do you know the way to San Jose?"  I mean, that's what friends are for, right?  Wrong.  Instead I asked her, "Hey, where did you get that pillow?" and proceeded to admire the pillow where she was laying her probably-not-even-psychic head.

Even in dreams I avoid -- transferring the seriousness of this Kardashian konversation over to my second favorite past-time:  hoarding things.  I could have even been a nice person and asked Dionne how she was grieving the loss of Whitney and at least given her a sympathetic look.  But I really wanted that pillow.  It was silver and glittery and would look really nice on my couch and if I didn't move fast Kim was going to get to it, and unlike me, she'd just get bored with it and discard it after 72 days, whereas I'd keep it forever, laying my still-dyed-red-head on it as I uttered my last words on my death bed in Shady Pines:

"The Kardashians were right."

Hopefully those words will come far, far from now, when maybe the 20 year old orderly at Shady Pines won't even know who the Kardashians are.

And in the meantime, I'll continue to find ways to not obsess, or at least find healthier, more productive things to obsess about.  There are 72 days left of summer, and by the end, I either want to have managed my anxiety a bit better (however/whatever it takes) or used the anxiety as fuel to cure cancer (stretch goal) or clean out my closet (doable).  If Kim and Kris kan kill a marriage in 72 days, I can make progress on my own personal goals.

Call me crazy but I think I can do it.