Death Fantasies

My daughter Brenna is working on a writing project right now to help someone out (she’s in grad school) and she’s experiencing something I’ve gone through many times in the past: death fantasies. It goes something like this:

You’re offered a project that looks like it might be hard. You take it anyway. You get into it and realize it is IMPOSSIBLE! You don’t have enough information, you have no idea what you’re talking about, and you feel more lost and confused with each step. Every day begins with this problem and every night it’s there haunting you. But you HAVE to keep going and get it done.

That’s when I start having death fantasies:

• I’m walking down the basement stairs to my office and a man jumps out from the dark hallway, grabs me and strangles me.
• I’m going out to get the mail and I suddenly trip, fall down the steps and bang my head on the sidewalk, resulting in a coma from which I never awake.
• I’m approaching the traffic light and as I go through the intersection, a giant truck runs a red light and crashes into me, killing me instantly.
  
  I’m sorry to see that Brenna is now doing the same thing I used to do; I must remember to tell her to find another way of coping.
  
  What I’ve learned over the years is to just not take the damn job in the first place. For example, I drove all the way out to Muskegon one day to talk to a potential client at Brunswick about a writing project they had. I didn’t know anything about it, and when I got there, the lady explained to me what it was: Writing (the very first) instruction manual for machinery that cleans bowling alleys.
  
  After she finished telling me all about it, I looked at her and without hesitation said, “I’m sorry, but I am not the right person for this project…” What I wanted to say was, “A bowling alley cleaning machine instruction manual? I’d rather be tied down in the desert with fire ants!”
  
  I knew this was one of those things that would eventually bring on the death fantasies, and quite frankly, I’m getting a little to old for that. Or maybe just too close to the real thing. Actually, the truth is I’ve reached the point that I don’t have to take on those jobs anymore – and that is the most life-affirming thing of all.