FOUR CORNERS

Sometimes in life, you back yourself into a corner (or two), and sometimes life will back you into a corner which may, or may not, be a good thing, depending upon how the cards choose to fall, and, (perhaps a little), upon how you play them. If, for example, it’s a creative corner, this can sometimes be a good thing, but if it’s a corner where you feel that same creative spark might get you into trouble or embarrass you, then, on occasions, those corners can turn into sharp, unexpected hairpins and you find yourself swerving out of control and barely hanging on for grim death. After all, shutting off an avenue of opportunity every once in a while, and putting your head down, isn’t necessarily the worst thing if it can prevent further pain somewhere down the line.

All this preamble is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve found myself in four such corners lately, and some of them have been the former and some the latter, and what the outcome will be is still vague enough to set my insecurity impulse racing and drag me back under that rock where I know I’ll feel safe.

The tax form, after all, ought to have been a breeze, especially as I’d remembered (apparently wrongly) that most of it had been filled in already months ago. Upon opening it up, however, it turned out that I was indeed utterly wrong about that and pages and pages of unmarked print lay in front of me asking questions about my mother’s finances that I could not possibly answer, leading to more endless rounds of telephone calls, and, sadly, more broken nights as the 4.00am panic attacks kicked off again.

Then I made what might turn out to be an online mistake, (although I hope it won’t), which, if it all unfolds as reasonably and unobtrusively as I hope, will probably not be the worst thing, unless, of course, it is indeed the worst thing, in which case it might turn out to be a bigger mistake than I feared it would after I dithered around before taking a reckless “what the heck…” approach.

After all, I reasoned, sometimes a little knowledge is better than just having those eternal unanswered questions to deal with, even if they can sometimes cause other questions to reveal themselves.

In the meanwhile I was  tracked down in an arena where I usually let my creativity run free and immediately found myself shutting down because of the potential embarrassment of being witnessed in circumstances where I’m bound to have to explain myself. The freedom that a certain amount of anonymity gives can be immediately crushed when you may have to look someone in the eye and have them dissect you, I find.

Meanwhile, a social opportunity presented itself and, despite the usual qualms, that particular corner turned out to be okay, and so it turns out that certain corners are perfectly fine to be in, and might actually have doorways in them, and most of my fears are of my own making, and my planned four paragraphs about four corners have already stretched to seven and proves that any kind of planning is probably unwise, and that opening yourself up to the big wide world can be just as stifling as shutting yourself in.