Listen to the Rain

Based on articles like this one on Cracked or the one with comic strips that went around a couple weeks ago (at least among people I know), it got me thinking about irrational fears I have. So here some of them are!

• When I'm walking outside with my hands in my pockets, I worry that I'll slip and fall straight on my face before I can get my hands out to stop myself, and that the fall will knock out all my teeth.


• I assume that anyone I pass when walking is a potential threat. I put this here because of its sheer scope--while it's possible that the guy walking quickly with his hood up is a threat, it's much more likely that he's just cold and wants to get home. However, the woman with a child in a stroller? The man walking his dog? The three middleschoolers? I still tense up when I pass them and relax when they're safely behind, even though I'm not exactly sure what could happen. It's not like I'm going to get a dog thrown at me as a prelude to an assault.


• When I wake up and can't hear anything, I worry that softlykarou died in her sleep. I check to see if her chest is moving, and sometimes put a hand on her to make sure she's still warm. She does this to me as well, so at least we are comfortable in our shared delusions.


• Every time I go to bed, I worry that I won't be able to sleep at all and I'll spend the entire night tossing and turning. This isn't entirely irrational, because I've always had trouble with sleep (see the insomnia tag), but while it usually takes me 30-45 minutes to fall asleep, that's actually down from my childhood, when it was more like an hour to an hour and a half. I'm getting better, not worse. But every time, I still think that there will be a repeat of that time I spent seven hours tossing and turning and got one hour of sleep.


• I worry that I'm going to turn my head too quickly in just the wrong way, that something will hit my glasses and break them, sending shards of glass into my eyes, and I'll go blind. This is probably exacerbated by my height.


• I worry that everyone actually can't stand me and only deigns to hang out with me due to politeness or because they're actually interested in spending time with softlykarou.


• Maybe related to the previous fear, I worry that I actually smell terrible and people aren't reacting to it because it's not socially acceptable to call people out on it. This mostly only pops up when I'm on public transit. Apparently a pathological form of this is pretty common.


• The irrationality of this may be debatable, but I worry about global civilization collapsing or being seriously damaged within my lifetime. If it won't be a plague due to antibiotic resistance, it'll be wars due to water shortages, global warming, economic apocalypse caused by automation, or any number of other problems. A lot of these are a concern, but the timeframes are such that the worst it'll get comes after my death unless Kurzweil is right.

Some of these may be more rational than others, but they're all so unlikely that worrying about them is pretty much a waste of time. And yet...