Seeing the forrest from the trees

As I ponder things, which I am often found to do, one of the realizations I've come to about myself is the that fact that I have this inability...at times...to maintain perspective.  It's as if my head gets so far down into whatever I am dealing with, so intently and intensely, that I seem to lose the ability to climb back out.  Well I lose the ability to easily climb back out.  Mentally my internal engine gets so revved up that I can feel things racing around.  It's not a frightening thing, but I need to learn to better cope with the phenomena.

Side note:  it's both pathetic and encouraging that I even think of this stuff.  Pathetic because, on some level, at my age one would think that I would have already gotten past this sort of thing.  Encouraging because, on another level, we all have doubt at every age.  I'm just the sick bastard who actually takes the time to write about it...on the Internet.  Back to the posting... 

Monday  was a great example. I have a few, say we say, "higher profile" things I am working on these days, and some wrinkles have appeared.  Nothing that, in the big picture of things, can't be dealt with and handled.  Nothing here that will cost millions of lives and billions of dollars.  Easy to say that now, but for most of Monday it was difficult to pull myself mentally out of the swirls associated with working these issues.

The symptoms of all this?  It's almost pathetic (there's that word again) in some respects.  At the risk of being crass, when I get like this I have to pee, almost constantly.  Somehow my body runs through it's natural resources at an alarming rate with both inputs and outputs accelerated.  No, I am not Diabetic, as I have passed every blood glucose test I have ever taken with flying colors.  Another symptom is that I feel this intense internal pressure, but it's not as if it's a pressure that, for example, "if I only accomplish X" will go away...no, this pressure is far more general and non-specific.  I know, I am probably just describing general symptoms of stress, but so be it.

The most disconcerting thing associated with this whole thing is the fact that, buried deep inside of me, there is this little voice saying...

"You know, you should take a step back, take a deep breath, think about all the positives in your life (of which there are many) and re-focus."

The problem is that hearing this particular voice is like trying to pick out just one person singing in a chorus.  I know the voice is there, and I can barely make it out, but the other sounds over-power it.

As I think about this particular topic in its totality, I'm reasonably confident that what I describe is not unique to me or to my age.  There is, by that logic, some comfort in knowing that we all have this stuff to deal with and that there probably exists lots of advice and wisdom on how to keep focused on the truly important stuff in life.  They key, as I see it, is in not finding magical solutions (which unfortunately some find in the bottom of a bottle...beer/booze/other) but in recognizing the problem in the first place.  The biggest problems we face in life are those that we fail to see as problems in the first place...before it is too late.

Here's to continuing to not cease from exploration...both internally and externally.