Don't panic, don't panic... Why aren't you panicking?!

Everybody panics.

Well, there's a deep nugget of insight, right? Huge revelation for your Thursday morning. That's right up there with "Everybody poops" and "everybody hurts". Everybody panics? Yuck.

It's true through. Everyone has their own way of not taking things in stride in some way. And when it happens, it's rarely handled well. Any kind of activity, any kind of population, any kind of stakes, you find people panicking in some form. I mean, just look at Reservoir Dogs. For those of you unfamiliar, Reservoir dogs is a movie about a jewelry heist that goes horribly, terribly wrong, from things like the cops showing up to men getting shot to not being sure who has the stolen jewels to undercover cops. The plot itself isn't really all that spectacular, but the dialogue of the movie drives everything else. Anyway, one of the characters, called Mr. Pink (his only name in the movie) has a little soliloquy about panicking when discussing things that are not going right:

"I mean, everybody panics. I don't care what your name is, it's human nature, you f***ing panic. But you panic on the inside, you take a breath, get control of the situation, and deal with it. What you don't do is start shooting of the place and f***ing killing people."

Obviously, only part of that has anything to do with what I'm actually talking about, and I pretty much already made that point, but who doesn't love talking about Reservoir Dogs, right?

Panic has a lot to do with uncertainty, I've found. I mean, people rarely panic when they are familiar with a situation, no matter how absurd the situation is. Being familiar with a situation means you know what to expect, which tends to put us at ease or at least allow us to remain calm. You can know what's coming and still be upset or excited or angry or something else about it. You can even explain to others what's going down, and what's at stake, and how to get your head around it. And as a result, whatever you're dealing with becomes the new normal, and we don't panic about normal.

Ooh, you know who had a good quote about panicking? Heath Ledger did:

"You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow, I tell the press that a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But if I say that one little ole mayor will die, well, then everyone loses their minds!"

Did I say Heath Ledger? I meant Heath Ledger as the Joker, but same thing. Plus, who doesn't love talking about the Dark Knight, right?

So yeah, things stay on plan, everything's fine. Things don't stay on plan, and things might not be fine, because new territory is usually unexpected and misunderstood. And I know that many people actually deal with panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, or a few different forms of something similar. And it can be difficult to grasp at the time. I've had a few times that I felt a large pang of anxiety hit me in the last few years, just thinking about everything I have going on in my daily life and everything that I want to get done in the near future, and it all felt overwhelming when I looked at it all at once and wondered how the hell it would all get done. You could make the case that I felt this way because of the lack of an overall plan for every part of the things I still want to get done. Or you could just say that I let my mind wander and take on too much all at once instead of looking at each individual task, one by one.

Now, I have a few different things that could bring me back down from letting my stress and anxiety pile up like that. I can just take a few deep breaths and let myself resettle. My fiancé, Tara, has always been very helpful when I need to re-center myself and deal with something. I can go work out, shooting hoops or running or lifting or something of that sort. I can play music here in my apartment, or just listen to music really loud and dance around to it like an idiot. I can read a book, cook something, go for a walk, I can call up a friend or a family member, hell, I can sit here and write about it. I always feel better about whatever I'm doing after I write it out on paper. It's almost a way of getting the thought out of my head so I don't have to carry it around as much.

Not to mention, I mean, so many things that we deal with in our daily lives are really not so bad if we can just finish them and get to relax that they are finished and are smaller situations by themselves. Work, chores, bills, school, traffic, groceries, sleep, sports, errands. It's all manageable, even though it might not see it as a single pile. Over time, the stress from little things will invariably have a larger collective effect on your daily life and health than single traumatic events, unless you're one of the few people out there that terrible shit just constantly happens to, in which case all the traumatic stuff will actually seem like regular, mundane stress. But for the rest of us, daily life will be the thing that wears us down and stresses us out, over and over and over again. Finding a way to process and move past that daily stress makes everything that much more easy to deal with.

On the other hand, there are some situations that you don't just write about and stop thinking about. Like, there are moments that you don't just release and forget about, but instead just kind of stick with you, and you actually have to keep thinking about them even though the moments have passed. There are some things that you have happen, and then you literally do everything you can to forget about them for a while, until some time has passed and you can fully process exactly what the hell happened.

And you're probably thinking at this point, "Okay, here's where Victor is going to tell another embarrassing story about himself." Because so far, this blog has featured a lot of my egg-on-face moments. And I really should try to move on to other people's embarrassments at the very least, right?

Well, maybe another time.

One time, I almost choked to death on my friend's blonde hair.

Okay, now that you've got some terrible mental image, I'll tell you what happened. I was at track practice in Texas a while back and it was windy. Most of you that have never lived in Texas might not understand what I mean by 'windy'. I don't mean there was a breeze and the flags were flying in a certain direction. By windy, I mean we were looking up in the sky, making sure Dorothy and her house weren't gonna be moving through the area. Wind is not playing around in Texas and at certain times, it seems to keep changing direction over and over again.

So, like I said, track practice. I'm warming up by jogging and stretching and doing my high-knee circuit, and a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a year or two showed up. Let's call her Pam. I'm not sure why, but she's Pam in this story. Pam was a little bit younger than me, and she had been working out with the same coach as the one I was currently training with, but she had been gone for a while and it was the first time she was coming back in a while. So I was excited to see her and she was excited to see everyone at practice, me included. Before you ask, no, we were not actually interested in eachother (to my knowledge) but we were very good friends.

Pam was a little bit shorter than me, and she had long flowing blonde hair that she usually tied up to work out. But since she was not actually training that day, her hair was just blowing all over the place. But when she saw me, she ran up to me and gave me this enormous hug that caught me a bit off guard just because I didn't see that it was her until a moment or two before the hug was initiated. And then all at once, I was caught off guard for a completely different reason.

Somehow, a large portion of her long blonde hair blew directly into my mouth. My mouth was open in surprise and it turned to greater surprise when I realized that I was tasting hair all at once. And then it turned to greater surprise/horror when it became clear that some of the hair had actually moved all the way to the back of my throat and was kind of stuck there. In my mind, it became clear all at once that I was actually kind of choking. This provoked a bit of panic in my head. Oh shit, I don't know how I'm going to stop choking, I thought to myself. There's no way for me to reach the hair with my hand, and there's way too much hair. The hair is everywhere. What am I going to do? Am I going to choke to death at track practice? Who dies at track practice?!

So I took about 10 seconds to recollect myself and then decided to try to get out of this without drawing more attention. Which, by then, was going to be difficult. The hug had been going on for about 10 seconds, and it was a bit awkward, but I couldn't do anything else. I mean, I didn't know how to sit there and deal with someone pulling their own hair out of my mouth, and as far as I could tell, Pam had so much hair that she didn't immediately know what was going on behind her back. So I doubled down on the hug. Just when it felt like we were both letting go and were going to start catching up, I went in for a larger and somewhat more aggressive hug. In fact, for part of it, I picked her up with the hug and started spinning around. I actually started pulling my head back to the side in a certain direction so that the hair started to slide out of my windpipe very slowly, all while trying to keep the focus on the friendly affection that was going in an interesting direction. And I could hear her laughing nervously while this was going on, but I couldn't be sure if she actually knew what was going on, because Pam actually had a nervous laugh on a normal basis. Looking back, she probably didn't know what had gone down right away, but knew it was weird.

So this hair extraction that was masking as a long-lost hug, it lasted a good 30-45 seconds. During which time I wasn't really saying anything, because what can you say while choking in such a ridiculous manner? You can probably guess that I did in fact get the hair out of my throat, since I lived to tell about it. Pam had this uncomfortable smile stuck to her face as she laughed when I finally released her, and I'm pretty sure I had a look of confused terror on mine. When we did start talking, we completely ignored what had just happened and she started asking about practice or school, or whatever the hell else. I don't think we ever fully acknowledged to one another that she almost killed me with her hair.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of choking, especially on a human body part, or out in public, or at track practice. But I must say, if it happened a few more times, I might actually be able to get through it without panicking. And then, I'd be worried for a different reason. Namely, why is something this ridiculous become a norm in my life? What decisions that I make are contributing to this situation occurring over and over again? Every once in a while, I think you have to look at the problems that you're dealing with and ask yourself, is this something that other people have problems with? If not, what are others doing differently to prevent this, and should I be doing them too? Is there a risk that I have just gotten used to taking? Should I be more fearful and respectful of what wind is capable of?

Just saying, don't worry so much if you panic in a new and stressful situation. But maybe review things a bit if these situations are only happening to you.

Bye now.