Chill!

Late today. I was waiting for someone to arrive to fix the cooker, who is late, so I am held up, which means I have to leave my wife to deal with it, so she'll probably be late for what she has to do. The stress factors seem to be ratcheting up along the chain of time pressure - and one of us is sure to blow soon. Probably me, but being me this will be at an inappropriate time or place - very likely to myself in my head.

So I'm sitting here on the train, hurtling towards work - hoping I'll make it in time, my mind cross-referencing all the details from this morning, trying to work out how all this can be fixed, or alternately how all to could have been prevented - or in other words, trying to find someone to blame.

This act invariably stems from the nagging suspicion at the back of my mind that it is my fault - either in the arrangement, or the practice of the events that have occurred, which in turn increases my frustration and anger - grrrr!

So today I am writing fast, hoping that energy on the keypad will replace anger in my stomach and spine. The number of typos today exceeds my normal stratospheric amount, as my care is replaced by a desire to burn words on the page (screen!), and exorcise the emotion building up.

I look back over this post and think "Sheeesh!", knowing that I need to put all this in perspective, and realise that disasters aren't always my fault - indeed in this case the issue is definitely someone else's as it turns out, but that doesn't stop me putting myself through all the possibilities first.

This whole circus is the result of a utopian idea about time and punctuality, one fostered by the Fordian ideal of capitalism, which runs on this idea of measurable and plan-able units for the world to work to. The trouble is this sort of planning can't account for the impact of cause and effect when disaster or mishap strikes. Yet I find I have been trained to think, to feel the world can be organised to a schedule, that I can find my space within this schedule if I am disciplined and focused I can do this, then that, and still have time to relax here... on Thursday... for thirty minutes... Does anyone else see a problem here?