Now that the school year is up and running, my old enemy, Anxiety, keeps dropping in on me. She sidles in, beautiful, blonde, great hungry eyes, pencil-thin. A dreadlocked Calista Flockhart. She'll watch me with those pussycat eyes and smile. Pretending to be concerned about my well-being, she asks me how I'm doing with all the work, how the family is coping with my schedule, and how I'm juggling 24 personalities plus a league of coworkers and parents, but I know she doesn't give a shit. She just wants to eat me alive. And she's done that in the past, chewing me up and spitting out the sinewy pieces.

Pretty much these days, though, I'm onto her. Sometimes, if I just ground myself, if I sit at this keyboard and feel the cool keys clacking beneath my fingers, I can ignore her. If I breathe and follow the movement of the air through my being, she gets bored. I keep hoping she'll take off for good, but she always makes it back to me. It seems it's not about banishing her, it's about managing her.