I give my anxieties names sometimes. And imagine them as little imp like creatures and then sit them down and them imagine having a little sit down chat with them that usually ends in a hug. My therapist was working with me to be kinder to myself so I did that with my anxieties.

Although one time I felt completely overwhelmed and like they were just coming after me like a horde. And I turned that into an imaginary dance off in my head.

I didn't actually dance but it was amusing to envision

I think I treat depression and anxiety the same way? Which is ... basically distracting myself with something else shiny until I feel calmer/less spirally. Well, focusing on the present moment is probably a better way to put it, but usually I add in something shiny as enticement, I guess.

I have also been known just to curl up and go to sleep, though.

I am BIG on curling up and going to sleep in reaction to any stress. It's a very attractive option, but doesn't really do much to reduce the amount of stress in my life over all...

An unrelated haiku

Not into today
No interest in working
Why am I awake?

Driving the Bus still gives me anxiety.. but only before I'm doing it. My brain seems to have a Cope mode once the actual activity starts.

I just want to show alla y'all one frigging sentence that it is my job to edit:

"A frame-shifting single nucleotide deletion was found in the ORF15 exon of RPGR (GRCh37 [hg19] x:38145160delT; NM_001034853.1: c.3092delA p.(Glu1031Glyfs*58)), which is predicted to cause loss of 121 amino acid residues at the carboxyl terminus of the protein."

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. It's just a bunch of letters thrown at the screen. (No, I basically know what the sentence is saying, but all the letters -- which are genetic markers [I think] -- are absolutely outside my wheelhouse. My MO in things like this is to edit the sentence around the alphabet soup, and then google the alphabet soup to make sure each thing is a real thing that exists. And then I hope it's all good.)

I think that's the kind of thing you just have to trust the writer knows, Steph. The editor can't be expected to catch if they make a mistake in a formula or chemical designation, you're an expert on grammar, not genetics and biochemistry.

Yeah, all I can do is check to make sure the genetic designations are correct (thank you, Google) and then make sure they're consistent throughout the article. Even so, it's a lot of alphabet soup.

I am reminded of the brochure I was working on so that we could get it translated to Chinese. We got the translation, and my other non-Chinese-reading coworker and I just looked at each other like, "Looks great!" We forced our Chinese coworker to really read it carefully, but who knows if she missed anything.

My MO in things like this is to edit the sentence around the alphabet soup, and then google the alphabet soup to make sure each thing is a real thing that exists.

I'll get this sometimes with the engineers, "That word you are using; I do not think it means what you think it means." One Google later, "Well, whadda you know! That is a usage of that word of which I was not aware!"

I have trouble reading phone numbers correctly (my mental buffer is about 5 numbers long) so I think it safe to say I would have had some trouble if I'd gone into genetics research.