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Is Anyone Here Naturally Calm?
Ladies and Gentlemen of Ricochet, your ordinarily affable morning-in-Paris editor just had a complete meltdown.
Before anyone gets concerned, let me assure you: nothing is wrong. Nothing. No one was shooting at me. No large animal was trying to eat me. There was no fire or famine at the door. I’m in a warm, quiet apartment in the heart of a developed city. There is nothing wrong (beyond my usual concerns about the state of the world).
Except that I tried to update my OS and it didn’t go so well. In fact, it seems to have killed my ancient but usually affable Mac. So I’m typing this on my backup computer, which is very slow and too old to run all the programs I usually use. I can’t get on Slack to chat with the other editors, although I’ve alerted them by e-mail to my temporary incapacity. I’m worried that whatever I’ve done wrong will be expensive to fix.
That’s all that’s wrong. And all of that is is — objectively — what normal people think of as a nuisance, not an emergency, right?
Even as the screen went black and the computer died, I knew, rationally, that this was not a real emergency. I knew that even in a worst-case scenario — even if I’d really, permanently killed my computer (and I probably hadn’t) — everything was backed up. I knew the other editors’ lives did not, in fact, depend on my being on Slack. I even knew they were probably safely abed and completely unworried about me. I knew I could make this right by walking ten blocks to the Apple Store and spending money. Heck, I’ve been needing a new computer for a long time, it might even be fun to get a new one. So nothing about this is a big deal: It can all be fixed. Would that all the world’s problems could be fixed so easily, right?
There was really no good reason at all for my amygdala to send that kind of distress signal to my hypothalamus this morning. But it did. And off to the races it went, telling my adrenal glands to dump epinephrine into my blood and start pushing it to my muscles and heart. Pulse and blood pressure flew up. (Or so I assume, based on what I’ve read about the stress cascade; I wasn’t actually monitoring any of this. Subjectively, though, I pretty much felt the way I assume one would right before being devoured by a shark.)
I’ve calmed down now.
But it took about three hours to talk myself off that ledge, and I’m annoyed with myself. That whole unpleasant this-is-an-emergency internal drill was entirely unnecessary. It didn’t fix the problem and it made me unpleasant to be around. (There’s no one else in my apartment, but I’m capable of being just as annoyed with myself as I would be with anyone else who was pointlessly freaking out over nothing.) And it’s really uncool. I hate being uncool.
I don’t tend to freak out like this, by the way, in real emergencies. When those happen, I get cold and functional until whatever it is has been dealt with, after which I get depressed. If this had been a real emergency, I’d have probably coped just fine; then I’d have filed three impeccably-proofread columns about how I narrowly avoided being devoured by a landshark, submitted the invoices, and collapsed into exhaustion and depression for weeks. But computer emergencies — and other small stresses like misplaced keys and unpaid bills — make me freak out in a way real problems don’t.
Why? Is the problem that I conduct so much of my life online that somehow my brain has really confused my ability to connect at high-speed to the Internet with my ability to breathe? Is the problem some other, deeper, existential anxiety that gets displaced into something trivial because I can’t confront the real problem?
Insight, anyone? Are any of you the same way? If so, have you been able to change it?
I’ve often suspected that the naturally calm people who instinctively say things like, “Don’t sweat the small stuff” are just biologically different, and that it isn’t realistic for me to expect my personality to change all that much.
But perhaps someone here has become better at dealing with life’s smaller stresses.
If so, do you have any advice for me?
(PS: Think twice before installing El Capitan. Just sayin.’)
Published in General, Humor
Yes. Exactly.
Especially the part about showing competence – heck, even “leadership” – during real, life-and-limb emergencies – but shipwrecking myself on life’s “little emergencies”.
Not really. I go through seasons where I manage it better, and seasons where I manage it worse. But it never really goes away. And honestly, I seem to function better just accepting it and managing it than trying to rid myself of it.
Folks in my family seems to rely on catastrophizing, self-loathing, and anxiety in order to get things done. It’s a horrible way to get things done, incidentally – I couldn’t recommend it to anyone who’s able to avoid it. But when you’re used to doing things that way, trying to shut it down can result in the most disgusting sloth and apathy.
I’ve been defined by those that know me as incredibly calm and even keeled. However, deep inside is a hidden truth. I’ve always struggled with a burning cauldron of a anxiety, inadequacy and frustration. What has helped me is to search out the patterns and triggers for these feelings and to figure out ways to eliminate them. I’ve moved to different neighborhoods to eliminate commutes (driving in traffic was a huge trigger) and I’ve severed relationships, for instance.
I can say that in every case I can remember, while the process has at times been painful, the results have been empowering and have brought great peace in the end. Thus, the deep seeded inadequacy and frustration has subsided quite a bit as I’ve tasted the sweet success of having faced a major weakness and having dealt with it in a positive way. My anxiety is now largely gone and I’m actually becoming a more resilient thinker when things start to unravel. My outward demeanor is now a more accurate picture of what is happening in my soul.
I’m wondering, based on this and what GGG said, if we do well in those situations because we’re wired this way. After all, that stress cascade is designed to make us function well in genuinely stressful situations. So maybe people like us are better-prepared for genuine emergencies than the naturally even-keeled, not so well-adapted to normal-life stress?
I think every human being does. It just comes with the ride.
I’m not sure about the term “ripe” when describing a woman… :)
Your situation and particularly your overreaction to the computer failure indicates you don’t have enough thats truly stressful and dangerous going on in your life. Sure, too much danger burns out the … what, I don’t know, your amygdala or dopamine receptors or something. But the mind is always making a trickle of whatever it is that responds to a threat to safety. You being an outgoing world traveler type of person, it’s probably a very healthy trickle. If you don’t blow it out regularly then it backs up. Then the least little thing can cause you to go all Peckinpah.
You need a challenging and life-threatening hobby, that’s all. Just be careful, ok? Don’t start taking runs in the banlieues.
El Cap was an easy upgrade for me, on the desktop and the Air. (Does that make your blood rise? Time to go and get that wing suit fitted.)
Good point.
In life-or-limb emergencies, I can’t care whether what I’m doing is good enough or important enough. In lesser situations, though, it’s much easier to worry, “Am I just a loser for not handling this better?” A worry which, no matter how pointless it may be, can be deeply entrenched, dependent, I think, on both genes and upbringing – and a tough trait to be shamed out of, incidentally, since fretting over the loserness of fretting over loserness – compounded fretting – is the likely result.
Our family is very achievement-oriented. Alas not in the sense that achievements, however small, matter, but in the sense that, whatever we achieve, it’s not enough, and we should feel guilt for not achieving more. It’s that darn perfectionism, again. Very toxic. I have great admiration for people who don’t fall into these sorts of mental traps.
Of course, if you know you’re constitutionally unlikely to avoid a mental trap, you should do what you can to work around it. Which may involve strategies that seem absurd to those who aren’t prone to these mental traps to begin with.
Interestingly (well, to me), when I saw the first Bourne film, one of the things I really responded to was his knack for figuring out how to manufacture a local crisis, then calmly and quietly extricate himself from it. The scene in the embassy, where he sets off the fire alarm, rips the evacuation plan off the wall, knocks a guard unconscious and takes his radio, then calmly walks toward a fire escape along a route the guards aren’t taking (yet)… low-tech genius. That’s how to be in a (real or manufactured) emergency.
Paris’s suburbs really have a reputation problem. About ten, or maybe 12 years ago I trained to run a marathon here. You do the long training run every weekend, and tons of runners go running in the suburbs every Sunday morning and come back just fine. (Some are less lovely than others, but all would be safe enough to on an ordinary Sunday morning.)
That said, I reckon I’d be too tired to fret about my computer if I were putting in those kinds of miles now, though I don’t think my knees would be okay with it. More exercise is definitely a good idea, though.
No, I’ve gone through all the stages of grief with El Cap today and I’ve reached acceptance. I’m just trying to figure out what the best strategy for replacing it is: A new Mac with AppleCare, or spend less money on something that might be just as good, but might give me just as much of a headache next month? What do you think of the Air — is it fast enough to be my primary computer? Good value?
I used to use a honkin’ big powerful Mac laptop for everything, but it was such a pain to carry that when it died I replaced it with a minimal Air. Which I think very highly of. And a huge desktop Mac Pro with all the stuffins for programming and games.
The Air is more than powerful enough for web browsing, obviously, but I’ve used it with all sorts of document and spreadsheet work too. (Libre Office, Pages, Numbers.) It is so incredibly light that I take it everywhere without hardly thinking about it. No case, titanium.
So, my recommendation: The Air is powerful enough to be your only computer unless you edit graphics or video or some equivalent cycle-hog. Its small screen is, however, constraining. If you can have only one and it doesn’t have to be a laptop, get an iMac or whatever their midrange desktop is these days. If you must have a laptop, the Air is most satisfactory.
I buy this to a certain degree. Yet some of us do have stressful, even dangerous, stuff to deal with on a daily basis that, because it still feels like “taking care of small stuff”, doesn’t thrill us the same way that stereotypical danger does.
Here I am thinking managing stuff like diabetes, anaphylaxis prevention, or asthma – all stuff that could kill you if you let up on the tiny steps of routine vigilance you have been taught to take every day. The problem is, it still feels like routine. It might be danger, but it’s not adventure.
I can have only one, and it has to be a laptop. But I’m tempted by the Air all the same, because a) it’s less expensive; b) I don’t need it to be super-fast — I’m clearly not a programmer; and c) the reason it has to be a laptop is that I travel with it. So the lightness sounds very appealing.
I’ve pretty much been holding the old one together with string and Scotch tape for years, so I’m getting kind of excited about this new computer.
Maybe today wasn’t the worst day I’ve ever-ever-ever had.
I suggested the 13″ MacBook Air because eyesight, but maybe your eyes work perfectly (in which case, mazel tov) and you can get away with the 11″. Either way, you’re getting a dual-core Core i5 processor at 1.7GHz that boosts up to about 2.3GHz when it needs to, and the Intel HD 6000 GPU is fine for everything but your favorite first-person shooter. My late-2010 MacBook Air is silly-underpowered by comparison, but it’s still the one I’m using to type this in the comfort of my living room; my 2014 MacBook Pro drives the Thunderbolt Display in my den, and with its 8 cores and 16G RAM is often put to use simulating an entire small cloud for development purposes, and when it’s not doing that, it’s rendering Tomb Raider or Hitman: Absolution or Metro: Last Light Redux at maximum gorgeous settings.
Or driving a car. Or crossing the street, even.
And amazingly, in a few years it will probably seem as backward and obsolete as the pre-Obama Administration machine on which I’m now typing this. Maybe Stephen Hawking’s right to be worried: I can sort of see how by 2024, these things could decide they’ve had enough with people like me poking at them with our fat thumbs and trying to install “updates.”
That is a beautiful comment – liked the hobo one too – I just finished checking on some properties – going to my neighbor’s pool – it’s 86F here and not a cloud in the sky – tootles to Ricochet for awhile!
I’ve used the 13″ Air for several years now. No real complaints, solid piece of work. Only it doesn’t sport touchscreen. No pen drawing, equation noodling, etc..
Also, I read an article recently that Apple has decided to deemphasize the Air, which has been squeezed by its other models (Air is a compromise between their new big iPad and their more powerful MacbookPro). Hence they don’t seem to be matching the latter’s really high resolution. Do the research on this subject before buying as it may be a dead end product. You need to see the difference in resolution up close to know how much you would regret the Air’s lower definition.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is similar, with touchscreen controls, slightly bigger screen and probably higher resolution.
Oh sure GG0fG impress her with your damn talk of GHz and GPUs. You damn programmers are all the same, upgrade’em and leave’em. Take her in with that flashy software talk of yours.
Have you no shame!!!!
Regards,
Jim
It is, in fact, all about the Pentiums.
If I responded to computers not doing as anticipated with a full-scale freakout, I wouldn’t be able to do my job.
Lots of people build castles in air. Software engineers garrison them, provision them, and set up patrol schedules.
Social situations can cause me problems occasionally. People are scary.
I’m not always calm though. Sometimes I get like this…
Yeah, and there’s a big difference between personalities that describe a disaster partly caused by a lapse in vigilance as an “accident” and those who describe it as “all their fault”, since, without the lapse in vigilance, it may have been prevented entirely.
It’s easy enough to acknowledge in the abstract that accidents are jointly caused – dependent both on the choice to be doing something somewhere at sometime and dependent on luck. But different personalities seem to instinctively attribute more moral weight to either one cause or the other.
Strictly speaking, same here. I’m tempted to say my anger follows a Dirac δ-function.
Oh, how well I do know the sweet siren song you are singing to yourself right now. I may have to go buy a new Mac laptop for the sake of solidarity.
Stay with Apple. I use my MacbookPro (bought in 2011) for work and recreation. Best computer I have ever owned.
More like driving a boat, I think. The ocean will try to kill you if you turn your back on her and so will a chronic infirmity or illness.
I just finished your article and in addition to a computer melting down when you depend on it for work, I can’t say I wouldn’t have the same reaction – I also think maybe (early) menopause? Some are affected more, some less – even the average leaves us sensitive, sleepless, irritated, hot flashes, just for starters – you will get a better computer – probably time to do it – but you can’t get out of the other –
I haven’t read all the comments, but I think we are habituated to our routines and on some level they become be almost critical rituals. We are uncomfortable when routines are disrupted, and that makes life of control–even if it is a relatively small detour.
I think the immediacy of computers and some of the mystery behind their breakdowns may exaggerate inherent anxious tendencies.
Like a good blizzard, sometimes we need to take our interruptions as the stroke of blessing they are. Of course, that is easier said than done.
But taking 10 deep breaths and a walk around the block to smell the roses can help realign things. Whether or not the padooter is broke!
[ps…nobody touch my padooter, I’m on the ledge as it is. :) ]
I once had a meltdown over a lack of provolone of cheese. I mean really, I needed to cartoon-slap myself silly over that one!
Truthfully, it wasn’t about the cheese, but that was the trigger. :)
Moe, Larry, Cheese!