Hello!
I think I'll set precedent right off the bat... with a wonderfully off-topic post. I'm asking myself how I can even HAVE an off-topic post before I've established a topic, but we'll go with it for now. This probably isn't the most auspicious time to start my blog, but I've been saying that for nearly two years, and thanks to the efforts of Bernardo Heynemann and Michael Ruminer, I've been finally convinced to throw my virtual hat in the ring.
Tomorrow, I fly to Des Moines to meet the rest of my new colleagues. I've been working my new job for about a month now, and things are moving incredibly fast around me. I have not had a day yet where I've been able to focus on the same topic for more than a few hours, and rarely do I achieve that long. Another post will have to be about what I've learned about the costs of task switching as a software team lead, and while they're nothing new (see blog title), they are very enlightening to me. However, that's not what this post is about.
This post is about fear. Not the sudden, adrenaline-rushing fear of nearly driving off a cliff, or the apprehensive fear caused driving through a gang's game of street basketball, but instead it's about the fear of missing out on what could be one of the defining moments of my life. My daughter Elle is due to be born in three short weeks, and ever since I started planning this one night trip to Iowa, I've been able to think of nothing other than the horrifying thought that I may miss my wife going into labor, or be stuck several hundred miles from home on the night my baby is born. Am I silly? My wife thinks so, but she's the one that would gain the right to act a martyr for the next fifty-odd years. I'm sure everything will be fine, and that the worst effect of this trip is two days of separation for my wife and I, but I still cannot get this thought out of my head.
So, what is this fear? What name do you put on a slow, creeping, mind-consuming fear like this? Paranoia? Love? What's the word?