The Other Shoe

I woke up this morning and got out of bed - a real feat, since I really didn't want to, since I had better ideas on staying prone, snoring, flipping the pillow to find the cold spot. The house was so quiet when I rolled off the left side of the bed, padding down the stairs behind the dog to let her out and to flop into the wingback at the PC. I looked at email, checked for blog comments, surfed a little as she did her business in the backyard. I started coffee. I took a Tylenol for the headache that was working its way up my neck and through my sinuses and corneas. I took care of my own buisness in the downstairs bath, hearing the dog's collar jingle back in through the back door and upstairs. I shut the back doors, pushed the wingback under the desk and went back upstairs. Six a.m., and I really didn't want to get out of bed.

This morning I feel the weight of encouragement and doom - at least, I feel more than that headache pounding. I don't know quite how to explain it, but if you've felt it, you probably know what I'm talking about better than I can write. Overwhelming sense of urgency, but take your time to do it right. Encouraged on all sides, while waiting to fail anyway. Not depression, but more like melancholy or pessimism or waiting for the other shoe to fall, fall hard, fall messy. I'm not really thinking about failing - but feel that it's inevitable to make that one mistake that'll cause the wheels to come off again, that one miscalculation that'll throw everything out of whack.

There's no outside influence over this feeling. I should be feeling confident, strengthened by the encouragement of the people in my life. My wife and kids are great, our church friendships are growing, work is going well, people read my flippant, sarcastic rants & stuff and like it - it's all good on so many levels. And still there's a sense of foreboding, not in a panic or desperation - like I said, it's difficult to put to words. Just waiting for and planning for and expecting something to tilt the other way. Maybe that's a good thing, something to keep me level-headed and realistic in my idealism? Maybe I need to be a little off-center, a little whacked to move forward at all in this life?

I was talking to someone last week about how the "tension" is a good thing, usually.