Technique #2 – Penning
Definition: Confining a fear, as in corralling a threatening animal in a pen until it can be dealt with at a more appropriate time.
Let’s take, for example, penning a potbelly pig. Perhaps some of you have a domesticated potbelly pig and even sleep with it. While this blog does not take a position on sleeping with a potbelly pig, the action might suggest that you are not good at penning. Or, perhaps you have invented your own version of penning. If so, what do you call it? Should we call a psychiatrist?
Here is one of my stories. It involves a potbelly pig and other problem animals.
Stories*
I don’t enjoy the part about public speaking that has me anxiously vomiting over my notes; perhaps we can call this problem anxiety a sheep. I was helped in my penning of this anxiety while sitting 5 minutes before a scientific talk when my 12-year-old son text messaged me as to why, on the way to the talk, I had forgotten him and his 7-year-old sister at the local grocery store, where, anticipating the sheep, I had gone to pick up Pepto-Bismol. I texted my wife to pick up the kids, took extra Pepto-Bismol, and “penned” this new problem until after my talk. I will call this new problem a bull since it is bigger and more menacing than a sheep. [Substituting a bull for a sheep is not an ideal solution to sheep problems.] In any event, the sheep was forgotten, and the bull was penned. There would be plenty of time later to deal with family, including but not limited to (i) picking up some sweets for the kids, (ii) making amends to my wife who will have to leave the mother’s group she was hosting, explaining to all assembled why she will still perhaps not divorce me, preferring instead to use my absentmindedness as leverage to buy, perhaps, a potbelly pig.
*Since I am not writing these stories anonymously, and to prevent harm to my family, I may indulge in a combination of fiction and non-fiction, but I promise that all my posts will almost be true or false. I encourage as much openness by fictitious or non-fictitious blog participants as familial and friend prudence allow.