If there’s anything I’m really good at, it’s taking a little pebble of doubt and worry and turning it into a mountain, bypassing the molehill stage altogether. If you need something to worry about, just tell me your problems, and I’ll construct a worst-case scenario that will make them seem ten times worse than they are. I have loads of experience and a certain natural aptitude.

While I’m not very good at fighting dragons, and I often fight grasshoppers as if they were dragons, today I tried a new tactic in the war on negative thinking. I tried not thinking at all, with some modest success. Somehow the day went by with minimal sign of mountain or molehill, until I collapsed with exhaustion at the end and looked up to see what I had done.

The only way I know for sure that I accomplished anything today is by the big pile of outgoing mail on the corner of my desk. I hope I did everything right, because I don’t remember doing any of it, specifically. Yet there it is, a testament to the fact that keeping busy is the best way to keep from stewing about problems, the ones I can control and the ones I can’t.

Of course, the best way to dampen worries about problems I can control is to do something about them. Like solve them, for example (or hand them off to someone else, always one of my preferred options). I couldn’t do much about what was on my mind today, so I tried to keep it off my mind. I couldn’t have concentrated enough to do anything that required concentration, but I could keep busy with busywork.

So I was a little worried about Mom’s health today. She thought she might have pneumonia again, as she did last year when she gave us a scare, and Suzanne took her to the doctor. I kept busy to keep my mind from constructing worst-case scenarios, and since the day went by in a blur, I guess it worked.

By the time the day was ending and I still hadn’t heard, that old feeling in the pit of my stomach started coming back. But then I got the call, and while the diagnosis was, indeed, pneumonia, she has been given an antibiotic powerful enough that, with rest, she should be fine in a week or so. We’ll have to revisit that rosy prospect after a few days, but I feel better because she feels better. I’m still weary from scaling molehills and wrestling grasshoppers, though.