Love=Anxiety

No anxiety here!

Every so often I'll get this knotted feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it's because I'm super anxious about something, but sometimes it's because I'm in love with life. When I recognized that it's the same exact feeling, just with very different associations attached to it, I started wondering what makes it one and not the other. I'll get that feeling and attribute it to being in love with my city after a few days of being annoyed with my position in life; these times it's an unexpected but very welcome respite in what can be a dreary week.

Spurring this lovely respite was running my first 5K with my favorite lady in the Race for Autism. We were in Balboa Park, my favorite part of San Diego, in the foggy early morning with thousands of other supporters and fellow runners. Despite starting things off seeing a nasty fender bender over a not-so-desirable parking space, and then having to run my bag back to the car (we didn't realize how far away we'd parked until then) 10 minutes before it started because there was no bag check (which, honestly, how do you not have a bag check?), we were really happy to be part of everything. Because of the whole bag thing we started the run 5 minutes late and had to make our way through hordes of walkers with dogs and strollers, but it made us feel like champs to pass that many people throughout the course. When we finished we were given water and fruit and walked around the rows of booths providing a wide variety of professional resources for parents of those with autism, ranging from medical research to after-school enrichment. Then we trekked through lovely Banker's Hill back to the car and made a delicious breakfast before heading off for shopping. Rounding out the day with sushi with friends and going home still drunk made me a happy camper.

That happiness rubbed off on today and, though all I did was work, I felt in love with life. It was overcast and sprinkling raindrops, good songs were on the radio and I got excited for my plans next week. Again, I was asked why I don't move back to my hometown. These last couple of weeks have made it even more impossible for me to imagine leaving my wonderful city in order to move back there. I may not always live in San Diego, but if I leave it'll be for another amazing city I haven't lived in yet (Seattle's been sounding awesome lately). There's so much to love here: the vastly different neighborhoods, the food, the beautiful weather, Balboa Park, the nightlife, the people watching, the beaches, the friendliness of others and the abundance of running trails and dog parks.

But I still wonder... what makes that knotted feeling in the pit of my stomach feel like love? Or anxiety? Just like there's plenty to love, there's plenty to be anxious about, namely that I've now been job searching, heavily, for three months with no relief, that the job I do have is getting ridiculously out of control in the mismanagement, and that my poor computer– despite constantly outperforming no matter how much I abuse it– is definitely on the fritz.

Still, today that feeling was unmistakably one of love.