I’ve sometimes written about how difficult it is for me to come up with a quality blog entry when there isn’t much going wrong for me. That’s what I’m dealing with now. I’m still “in a good place.” I’ve been there for a little while. Yeah, I’ve had my ups and downs recently, but the lows haven’t been as low. The highs have been steady. And as usual, it’s confusing for me.

There’s a lot about my personality and thought process that is somewhat contradictory. While I try my best to not take good things or people for granted, I’m still disappointed when I lose good things or the people. Even though I’m always sort of expecting to. I know that doesn’t make sense to some, but it probably does to others.

I’m finally in a position in life that I don’t have to worry about so many things that I’ve had to worry about before. I have a good job. I have good health care. I don’t have much of a commute to work. I’m very much less stressed than I have been in such a long time. But, I’m scared that it won’t last. Is that due to precedents in my life? Is it due to my usual fears? What causes this?

I often talk about my programming. I’ve been programmed by my life’s experiences to not expect good things to happen, and not to last if they happen at all. I’m always expecting the worst. Yet, I still hope for better. I think that bit of contradiction causes some of my anxiety.

I’ve talked about how my life needs a balance. If one aspect of my life is going well, others have to be going poorly. Right now, there’s nothing that’s going particularly poorly. That worries me. While I’m enjoying myself right now, I always have this underlying feeling of “when is it going to end?”

Even as I enjoy how things are going right now, I should probably be enjoying things more, but the worry never leaves. I don’t know when or if it ever will. What would cause me to not worry about the future? I should be able to see the path I’m on right now as a good one. Well, more specifically I should be able to be on this good path and not worry about when it’s going to take a u-turn.

Not only am I enjoying things now, but more and more tasks are coming to me. Some are with my job, some are just things that I want to get done for myself. I know that if I accomplish or complete these tasks that I’ll feel good about them. I know that some of them could very well help my mental/emotional stability. Fear of failure with them is always with me. That’s something that never seems to leave. Sometimes I find it so much easier to not even try because in my mind, I can’t fail if I haven’t started something. Yet, at the same time, that sometimes makes me less motivated to do anything. It’s a bad cycle.

I know that much of what I’m saying in this entry is repetitious. I’ve said much of it in other entries. But that’s how my life is. A series of repeating cycles. I don’t know how much control I have over each of them. I know that some of the cycles can be broken, but I also think that my path/u-turn analogy from a minute ago applies here too. Maybe I can reverse course on some misery and head towards more joyful things. That road seems to be more difficult to navigate though. The road to Misery is a downhill path and the road out of Misery is a steep hill, usually very twisty and with many obstacles.

As I was writing that last sentence I thinking about a way to wrap this entry up. The talk about the “roads” got me thinking about the Allman Brothers Band. The 50th anniversary of their very first show was just a few days ago. One of their more famous lines is “the road goes on forever.” I guess this entry is me saying that I know the road goes on forever, but it doesn’t have to be one way street. I’m not sure how much I can dictate the path that the road takes, but I’ll do my best to navigate.