It was raining when I left my house this morning. Really hard. I usually avoid taking an umbrella for a couple of reasons. Most of the time, I forget to take umbrellas home. I have left enough umbrellas around in various places to supply the population of India during monsoon season. The other reason I don’t like umbrellas is that I can’t stand dealing with closing and handling the wet umbrella once I get inside. Like in a store or the car. I would rather get wet from the rain than from a wet umbrella. But this morning it was really coming down and I would have been soaked to the bone even from the short dash to my car, so I took the umbrella, and yes, I splashed myself a little when I closed it and put it on the floor of the car, but it wasn’t too bad- I was mostly dry.

I started driving with the umbrella, with its scary spikes, sitting next to me in my car. What if I had to brake hard suddenly? Would the umbrella go flying and pierce me? This is the kind of thing that goes through my head. Now you know- I don’t like getting wet from umbrellas, and I am a worrier. I know most of the things I worry about are silly and will probably never happen, but I still worry. I try not to but I can’t help it; I always conjure up the worst case scenario. Among other things, I worry about eating spoiled food and I worry about being stabbed by my umbrella and I worry about deadly insect bites and I worry about terrorist attacks. Some of these worries are real, some are ridiculous, and some I can’t do anything about so I know that I shouldn’t waste any energy worrying about them. So I try to reason with myself, and I thought writing about it would be good. Writing will help me make fun of myself which will highlight how irrational I am, and hopefully the worriers who read it will be able to laugh, too, and that will help them feel better about themselves.

By now the rain has ended and the sun is out so I can really close the umbrella and tuck it safely away for my drive home. Or maybe I’ll just leave it somewhere… But OMG! The sun! I didn’t put on sunblock this morning because of the rain and now my skin has no protection from those vicious rays! What should I do? Do you think one day without sunblock will be okay? I’m gonna guess probably and try to put this out of my mind. But do you see how this works? It never ends! I see danger everywhere but I try not to let my worries keep me from enjoying myself. I push them to the back of my mind and do the things that make life great. Because life is meant to be enjoyed and appreciated, not wasted on worry.