Displaced Anxiety
Last Thursday morning Howard left for Inconjunction. Later that morning I got an email from our printer. The interior file for Teraport Wars was somehow corrupt and they were unable to open it. File management is Howard’s job. He is the one who does all the uploading and compressing. Howard was away at a convention with no access to the files. He could not help me. Moreover, Howard was being relaxed and happy after the completion of the book. I saw no reason to hand him stress that he had no way of resolving. I firmly suppressed the voices of panic in my head and set about learning how to compress and re-upload the necessary file. It took me two hours to figure out how to do it. Then the upload took 5 hours. It was all done just before quitting time on Thursday. My contact at the printer sent me a note thanking me for the upload, assuring me that she would check it Monday morning, and wishing me a great holiday weekend. This was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that the file had arrived and everything was fine now. I had done everything I could do, I just had to wait until Monday to see if I’d done it all correctly. I decided not to tell Howard about the file problem until I heard from my contact at the printer. Once I heard from her, I could tell him with relief that the problem was solved, or I could share the stress and we would tackle the problem together. Decision made, I put it all out of my mind and focused on enjoying the holiday.
That phrase “put it all out of my mind” is not quite accurate though. The fear and worry did not really leave. Instead it leaked. Sunday, I found myself on the phone with Howard fretting over finding someone to take care of our kids while we’re at Worldcon. Even while I was worrying over the phone, part of me wondered why this felt like a dire emergency when the convention is a month away. I also wondered why I was bothering Howard about it when he would be home soon and we could talk in person.
Then Howard was home. He was in serious decompress mode. I hang around and listen when Howard is in decompression. It is my best chance to hear stories about the convention and to take notes about business actions on which I’ll need to follow through. I’d found a semi-solution to the childcare issue, but Howard was too tired to really address it and so I put it aside.
This morning I finally made the connection and realized that I’d been so worried about childcare because of suppressed fear about the book. I really wanted to tell Howard about it all, but I still had not heard from my print contact. Around 10 am I emailed her a short query. 20 minutes later she responded. All was well. The file worked and the project was moving forward as expected. I immediately went to Howard and gushed relief at him. It was like a geyser of fear and worry spouted into the air and blew away on the breeze. It was only after the fear was gone that I could really see how huge it had been and how much it affected everything else. I was left feeling post-adrenaline shaky. Next I need to reassess all the thoughts and feelings I had about childcare over the weekend. All of my reasoning skills were skewed from the suppressed fear. I should be able to take a clearer look at things now.