What, Me Worry?

A Confession from the monster in my head.

Every Friday, almost like clockwork, I have a ritual.

I pull up my Chase account and my credit union account. I see what came in from GoNaked, GoNaked Travels, and my other work. The first thing I do is pay myself. Then I pay the bills.

That routine took me far too long to learn.

When you own a business, paying yourself first isn't selfish. It's survival. If you don't, everyone else gets paid except the person doing the work.

Last Friday, though, life got in the way.

Bob was tied up with projects around the house. We were running errands. One thing led to another, and suddenly the day was over. "I'll do it this weekend," I told myself.

I didn't.

Then Monday arrived.

Here's something you might not know about me. I spent six years as a bill collector. I was good at it. Ironically, I also struggled with money when I was younger. I even filed for bankruptcy many years ago.

Those experiences leave fingerprints.

GoNaked has been slower lately. Summer often is. Maybe it's the economy. Maybe people are traveling. Maybe they're outside enjoying the sunshine instead of sitting at their computers. Whatever the reason, sales have been softer than usual.

Instead of looking at the numbers, I did something many of us do.

I imagined them.

For five days, I convinced myself the Visa bill had to be somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000. I played the same movie over and over in my head. How was I going to cover everything? What if there wasn't enough? What if this? What if that?

I never even opened my Chase account to look at the real balance. I let the monster in my head tell me how much it was.

Fear had convinced me that avoiding the problem somehow felt safer than seeing it.

Of course, avoiding it didn't make me feel better. It made me feel worse.

Every morning, the worry was still there. Every night, it followed me to bed. The problem wasn't growing. My imagination was.

Finally, this Friday, after Coffee Talk and a quick Zoom meeting, I sat down and did what I should have done a week earlier.

I opened the credit union account to see how much came in.

Then I opened Chase for the expenses.

The balance owed for the past two weeks was...

...just under $3,000.

That's it.

Not eight thousand.

Not ten thousand.

Three thousand dollars.

GoNaked has plenty of expenses. There are software subscriptions, website services, cloud storage, annual renewals, payment processors, travel expenses (hotels, food, etc), email platforms, and dozens of little charges that quietly pile up behind the scenes to keep a three-dollar magazine arriving in your inbox every month.

Even so, there was enough money to pay myself first and pay every bill.

Five days.

Five days of carrying around a weight that didn't need to exist.

The funny thing about worry is that it rarely reflects reality. It reflects uncertainty. Our brains seem wired to fill in missing information with the worst possible outcome.

We don't picture the bill being manageable.

We picture disaster.

We don't assume the doctor will say everything looks fine.

We assume the worst.

We don't expect the difficult conversation to go well.

We rehearse every terrible ending instead.

Maybe that's part of being human.

Still, I wonder how many hours of our lives we've surrendered to problems that never arrived.

So here's my question for you.

What's sitting in the back of your mind right now?

Is there a phone call you've been avoiding?

A bill you haven't opened?

A conversation you've been putting off?

A health appointment you've delayed?

Something you've built into a monster simply because you haven't looked at it?

Maybe today is the day to open the envelope.

Make the call.

Log in to the account.

Face whatever it is.

You might find that reality isn't nearly as frightening as the story you've been telling yourself.

I know I did.