Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel

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How We Spend Our Lives

Far more than you may realize, your experience, your world, and even your self are the creations of what you focus on.

Winifred Gallagher

I’m scheduled to depart for Nashville in twenty-seven hours, and I can’t stop refreshing the forecast. I have a million things to do before I leave—more than I can possibly accomplish—yet I persist in hitting refresh. I can see it’s not helping; it’s actually making things worse. Yet I keep doing it.

I’m driving south to work on a new project, one I’ve been planning for months. It wasn’t easy to get the date on the calendar, but now it’s finally here. My hotel has long been booked and my workbag is freshly packed. I’ve finalized my itinerary and downloaded a new audiobook for the drive. There’s just one wild card: the weather.

All week long, I’ve been monitoring the volatile storms that threaten to derail my plans. The forecast is not for Southern summer pop-up storms but a massive front coming to blanket the region. My friend first noticed the situation at girls’ night earlier this week. While we chatted and drank half-price glasses of wine, she peered over our shoulders at the silenced meteorologist on the bar’s TV. “Hey, when do you leave for Nashville?” she asked. “That storm does not look good.”

Because we’ve spent dozens of girls’ nights discussing our fears, both rational and otherwise, my friends know I’m an uneasy road tripper even on sunny days, and I abhor driving through storms. And they know how, just weeks before, my family had been caught in the worst thunderstorm I’d ever experienced, right on that same stretch of I-65 I would soon be driving again, solo. We were headed to Florida for our annual beach week; my husband, Will, was behind the wheel. Usually I’d be reassured by his steady presence, but this time even he looked fearful. Construction walls meant we couldn’t pull over, and the radar showed the rain wouldn’t let up for hours. Visibility was practically zero, and I’d told my friends after the fact that it was a miracle we didn’t end up in a hundred-car pileup on the interstate.

“Never again,” I’d said as I recounted the story.

But the five-day forecast made a repeat performance look possible. Maybe likely. “You’d better keep an eye on that forecast,” my friend said.

I’ve taken my friend’s words to heart, perhaps too much. This week I’ve been checking the weather constantly, hoping the storm would dissipate or its path would shift. Neither sunny outcome has materialized.

Instead of fading out, the storm has intensified—along with my anxiety level.

Leaving early isn’t an option. I have work to do at home in Louisville. I’ve also been traveling a lot this season and am not keen on the idea of leaving my family again. I don’t want to miss another family dinner or my son’s big baseball game on what promises to be a beautiful summer night.

But I don’t see how I can drive two hundred miles in the storm.

So now I’m staring at my computer monitor, hoping against hope that my next click will deliver a happier version of reality. But each time, I don’t like the new answer The Weather Channel serves up—and so I click again, and again. I make myself walk away from the computer to, you know, actually accomplish something, but I can’t concentrate with the storm looming. So I sneak back to my screen and check again. I feel more agitated with every click.

Before long, I’m snared in the too-familiar spin cycle of overthinking, unable to focus on anything else. I know the signs: lots of mental action, none of it constructive, all the while knowing I have better things to do. All my mental energy is consumed by the forecast—which I can’t do a thing about—instead of the things that actually need my attention.

The more I think about what to do, the less sure I am about the answer. Should I leave now? Should I wait? Should I keep waiting and hoping? The deeper I sink into my overthinking spiral, the less confident I feel about my ability to decide, and the specific problem in front of me mushrooms into a larger concern: What kind of idiot spends hours staring at The Weather Channel? Shouldn’t a competent adult be able to make a simple decision? I’m in danger of losing all perspective, when the humor of it hits me. I text my friend this message:

Current situation: massively overthinking my trip to