THE ANXIETY OF MESSING IT UP

There’s a weird thing that happens to me: every time I’m on the edge of something exciting happening, I seem to go to pieces.

I think it’s the anxiety of messing it up. Weddings are classic for that - someone’s big day isn’t going to be improved by me getting the time wrong or misunderstanding the dress code.

But it’s not just other people’s exciting events that make me nervous. It’s my own too! Tomorrow, Paul and I are flying to Israel, and I am quite overwhelmed. I have a massive gap between my imagination and the reality of what it will be like. Mostly though, I don’t want to accidentally forget something, get to the wrong flight or enter the wrong number for something, and let my friend down.

When we arrive at our digs then, and I lose the shoes and put Spotify on, I’ll be a bit brighter I hope. As soon as the adventure becomes a little clearer, I’ll relax into it.

I think doing sports at school would have helped me with this. I played chess, but it wasn’t exactly the same kind of thing - I used to get lost in the game and calculate how to control the only unknowns that mattered on the 64 squares of battle. When there are more people in the equation, the unknown unknowns start multiplying.

Well. Anyway, our flight is at 9am tomorrow, and in theory, it’ll all be grand. And in the unlikely event that it isn’t, I’m travelled enough to do some things about it between here and the Spotify moment - shoes off, glass of something relaxed, and a deep sigh for a balmy Tel Aviv evening.

Bring on the Spotify moment.