There are two things I’ve been told about my Japanese.

1 – That my American accent is cute. (High school Japanese teacher)

2 – That I speak with deep emotion in Japanese, and I’m so incredibly expressive, so what on earth must I be like in English? (College Japanese language and culture instructor who probably doesn’t really want to know the answer to that question)

The thing is, I get the most nervous for photo shoots, blog posts, exams, finals, quizzes, and the like, when it’s so much in my wheelhouse that it’s almost not. It’s like it’s so me that it becomes not me because I worry. I worry that it’s so deeply embedded in everything I’m meant to be and do and that somehow I’ll drop the ball on it. I’ll stop running with ease on that hamster wheel. What if I give 98% instead of 100%? I got nervous to do my oral Japanese exams, and it wasn’t because I was afraid to stand up in front of 50 people and tell personal stories in Japanese, although it was that too. It’s because I was so afraid you’d never know just how much I know and feel and think and can do. And how will you know unless I tell you?

In Japanese and in English.

Imagine if people paid me to photograph moose, taste test ice cream, or photograph weddings overlooking goats. Oh wait..

There’s no money or ice cream or goats involved in this week’s Finish the Sentence Friday post, but I have that feeling. Of something being too much in my wheelhouse. The topic is “10 things I worry about,” and honey, my worries have worries. I’m a worrier, worry wart, worry pants. Except when I’m not. It seems embedded in my DNA, though, to always crop up in life. I try to manage worries and anxieties (not the same but not different) in the face of a world that is already worrisome.

It is. School shootings. Dangerous politicians. Climate change and cancer. School bus bombings and road rage and crashes. It’s like when I tell people I have a vomit phobia. No one LIKES to vomit (right?) but a dislike or fear is not a consuming phobia. A rapid heart rate, irrational phobia. Managing worries in an already worrisome world. 10 things I worry about:

1 – I worry that I won’t be able to write this the way it should be written – unequivocally me. When someone compliments my writing or photos, I worry I’ll never be able to produce again. When no one compliments me, I worry that I’ve lost it.

And if it’s not 100% the one time, what if it never is again? Just gone. Forever.

2 – Speaking of which, I worry that I’m fading away, day by day. A disappearing act. Losing relevancy. Losing everything.

3 – I worry I don’t know how to adult and I never will. I know people make memes and jokes about not being able to “adult today” but what if it’s real? What if i can’t? I’m prone to chaos and frustration. I overwhelm and distract, and I’m overwhelmed and distracted. Sometimes I can’t do the simplest tasks. And sometimes I move mountains and worlds.

There is no in-between and I worry about that too.

4 – I worry about changing tides and hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. I worry about tsunamis and flooded towns and the natural disasters getting worse – while we can’t keep up – scrambling on two legs that will never outrun the change.

5 – How I worry you’ll never see charming, solid, funny, relevant, strong, me. That there’s a pale imitation left in her place.

6 – I worry that I’ll feel so much that I’ll literally die of it, or maybe I’ll never feel enough and I’ll die of that instead. I worry about compartmentalizing grief and love and loss and I worry about inner aneurysms and land mines and bombs.

“Had to stop in my tracks for fear of walking on the mines I’d laid.”

7 – And, I worry when I have too much work and I worry when I don’t have too much work.

8 – I worry that I’m not the mom I could and should be.

9 – I always worry about death. Heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, planes, trains and automobiles. Is this freckle changing shape? What if the pain is here to stay? What if I’m right? I worry that I have no future at all. Just, nothingness.

10 – I worry that maybe I’m wrong and the future is so big and so bright but I’ll never even see it. Never even realize it.

You know what else? I worry this isn’t beautiful or positive or cleaned up with a shiny bow. I worry about how much I left out – like about having panic attacks while driving, losing everything in one night, and never becoming what I could be.

And, oh, what I could do and be without all this worry.

This is me linking up, as one of my favorite things to do, with Finish The Sentence Friday. This week’s topic is “10 things I worry about.” And there’s still time to write yours. Come link up with your spin: HERE. What will you say??

Does it get better than this song?