A lot of my writer friends suffer from some form of anxiety. Maybe that’s because as writers, we’re always imagining possibilities for our characters — the worst possibilities. And we do it in our own lives, too.
This morning, I couldn’t find the cat while some contractors were removing the most awful vinyl known to man from our kitchen. I’d taken the cover off of one of the kitchen air vents. Thus I convinced myself, for the better part of three hours, that the cat had fallen into the vent and disappeared into the furnace forever.
This way of thinking is good for writing. But it’s lousy and exhausting for living.
So one of my goals for this year is to remember Occam’s Razor, my husband’s refrain for my assumptions. I’ll try to find the simplest reason, the simplest explanation. (In this case, it would have been: the cat’s probably hiding in the basement, which is where I finally found her.)