I've been pondering this for a while now. Is it possible to experience free-floating anxiety so intense that when the alarm goes off each morning, the first thing you do is a quick check to see if it's still there? Yep. Didn't take the redeye while you were sleeping.  Yet, you find yourself at the same time, so incredibly bored with the day-to-day of what is your life that you can hear the siren call of the sofa and HBO in the middle of the afternoon?

These are rhetorical questions. 

My emotional stew wouldn't be complete with a healthy serving of guilt. Guilt because I can't seem to wrangle a sense of complete contentment, when I have every reason to feel content.

I'm going to a convention in a couple of weeks. A long-time acquaintence will be there. I see her once a year. Over the years I've learned of her struggle to deal with her husband's rare degenerative disease, of which he eventually died from and left her with 3 school-age children. There was the time her house came this close to burning down in one of the many California fires. And, most recently, she has managed to come out of the other side of treatment for a rare cancer that riddled her body with tumors and required surgery and chemo.

She has something to be anxious about.

To the best of my knowledge, I, my husband and my two kids are healthy. Work has been really slow, but it's picked up a little lately and I'm hoping 2011 will be a better year financially. I exercise regularly. I read a lot, having recently rediscovered the library. And I write whenever I can.

Then why am I floating in a sea of anxiety, waiting for the next wave to overtake me? And why am I simultaneously bemoaning the fact that my life is a bore? What is it exactly I expect to happen?

I wish I had answers to my own questions. Right now, books, movies and writing are my coping mechanisms.

Eventually, I'll find my way to shore and I won't even remember exactly what this felt like. But, in the meantime, I think I'm going to resort to the backstroke and try to enjoy the clear blue sky. I have to remind myself that it's a blank canvas. Full of possibilities.