Home interruption anxiety

posted by Jeff | Saturday, May 7, 2022, 6:59 PM | comments: 0

Our upstairs AC went out again, and this time it's going to cost us quite a bit to fix. I believe these units have been serviced at least six times in less than five years. Having separate units for each floor is pretty common in Florida, so our downstairs is fine. However, that means we're camping out on couches and such instead of sleeping in our beds, and that's not fun. Also, after the second lightning strike that happened almost two months ago, I am still waiting for Tesla to fix the switch between the battery and solar, which means both are bypassed right now and I'm missing half the system during the two months with the highest amount of generated electricity.

This sort of thing causes me a great deal of anxiety. Also in this category are internet outages, builder contractors not fixing the shit they did wrong, movers breaking stuff, selling your house, not being able to sell your house... basically anything that disrupts the peace of home. I'm sure it's an unreasonable expectation, but I want everything to just work in this one place in the world. When it doesn't, I'm constantly on edge.

What I find strange about this is that there are certainly other aspects of life where I don't experience this. If my flight is late, I switch that part of my self off and roll with it to an extent. If there's setback at work, I compartmentalize it. I'm even getting better at managing world events, recognizing the importance of issues without them causing dread. But when home isn't working as home should, I am unpleasant and on edge.

I think this has become more true since first going remote for work a decade ago. When you get to a point where 90% of your time is at home, it's almost an extension of you. Then there was the pandemic.

In any case, another observation about my mental health. Anxiety is something I've been able to manage so far, with varying degrees of success, without drugs. For some reason, that still matters to me even though I've come to terms with the usefulness and appropriateness of using them to help with mental health.


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