WHAT DOES A WORRYWART LOOK LIKE?

Unrelated announcement: “Composting, It’s Easier Than You Think,” my latest post on Home Goes Strong.

Some folks seem to think a worrywart ought to look like a Shar-Pei. Not too long ago I commented on an article in Huffington Post.  I do this regularly as it drives traffic to my Worrywart blog. The first time I wrote a comment, another commenter called me out for not having read the article and for just trying to drive traffic to my blog.  You are quite right, Commenter, I told him/her. Whether my conscience kicked in or I was afraid of being kicked off Huffinton, I now devote a lot more time to what I should say, and I at least skim an article before commenting on it. Chinese Shar-Pei on Bench Photographic Poster Print by Henryk T. Kaiser, 18x24

Consequently my comments are getting a dot more substantive, which helps attract more viewers to my blog. Sometimes my comments include tips, for example on an article about dieting, I remarked with my favorite diet tip of how I control my weight by eating a chunk of dark chocolate with a handful of almonds and a big glass of skim milk at 5 pm each day, which makes me too full to overeat at dinnertime. Then I work in a link to Confessions of a Worrywart.

Recently, at 2:30 in the morning, I realized I hadn’t met my personal quota of one Huff Po comment a day. So I stumbled out of bed and typed a generic response to an article titled “The Hidden Health Benefits of Drinking?”

“This article is interesting.  It makes sense to look at all sides of drinking,” is what I wrote. Then, as usual, like a bad conversationalist, I directed the subject to moi, working in “I worry about healthful ingesting and everything else on my blog, blah, blah, and I gave the link.”

Someone named Isaidit replied to my comment, simply saying, “Your avatar doesn’t look like a worrywart at all, so I’m confused.” I was so pleased because it took me only about 20 seconds to recall what an avatar was.

As it turns out Isaidit’s avatar was a big, round, yellow, winky smiley face. So I replied, “Your avatar doesn’t look at all confused, so I’m confused.”

Isaidit got me thinking about what a worrywart looks like. I don’t have a furrow in my brow, but I bet some worrywarts do. I’m gregarious and I laugh a lot, not the way someone inexperienced with the inner workings of worrywarts would expect me to behave perhaps.

Oh, but when the lights go out at night . . . . Or I can be walking down a sundrenched path and even a flitty butterfly can trigger a worry, for example it can get me thinking of how overgrown the butterfly bushes in my front yard are and this thought can lead to how the neighbors must be tsk-tsking about all the weeds in my tree box which can lead to all the money it will cost to get the yard guy to help and that thought gives me a bad feeling that I’m not doing my own weeding, because I love weeding—it provides such a cheap thrill of accomplishment—but the mosquitoes have set up tenements in my yard and I have to spray with Off every time I go to pick up the paper, get the mail, walk the dog, go out on my bike, and I wonder what all that DEET is doing to my insides not to mention the environment and I really should try to get the natural stuff my brilliant environmentalist friend recommends on her Website, Big Green Purse, but how will I ever find time, now that, in addition to Worrywart and Huff Po, I’m blogging for the NBC Website Home Goes Strong and Moment Magazine. As I explained in my very first blog post, To Blog or Not to Blog, I can associate a worry with anything.

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