Worries

I read that someone once said, “Most of the stuff I've worried about never ended up happening.” That is great advice. I need to tone down my worrying about stuff, although I'm sure it isn't going to entirely stop me from worrying. I think its healthy to a degree. I've read those books about what to do in various dangerous situations … what to do in an avalanche, what to do if there is an earthquake, etc. I used the Heimlich maneuver on a person once. That was successfully done because I had done that move a lot of times in my mind thinking what would I do if someone was choking. They say mental practice is something like 60% as effective as actual practice. There haven't been people that would just let me practice Heimliching them, so mental practice is about all I could do. So the worrying, or I like to think of it as planning for future issues, paid off in that case. But I probably could give up some of my “planning”.

I was worried if I could deal with all the humidity here. I had a lot of people told me how humid it would be in Kentucky. OK, it is a little bit humid here at times, but its not that big of a deal. Tonight is probably the most humid its been, and its not that bad. And virtually every building I'm in has air conditioning, so that worrying was for nothing.

Regarding my healthy concern about snakes. I did just recently find out that if bitten you are not supposed to suck the venom out with your mouth. I always heard that's what you do. Who has been spreading that misinformation? So, that's years of “planning” that was for naught.

There is still the issue of bears. I've toned down my worrying about that, but I'm still somewhat concerned. In those books on what to do in dangerous situations, they say what to do about various animal attacks. All I can remember is that it depends on the animal. For some, you are supposed to act all fierce and the animal will go away. On others you curl up in a ball and act defenseless. On some you run away, on others, that's the worse thing you can do. I can't remember what is the right strategy if you meet a bear. If I curl up in a ball, maybe I just look like a mcnugget to him. If I get all fierce, maybe I just tick him off and he tears me in two. I need to find that book again. Maybe the bears have read that book and are one step ahead of me. I think the ones around here are smarter than the average bear. But I won't worry. I'm just planning.