Even in Arcadia...

(Image from Questionable Content. Buy their stuff; it is cool.)

I am spending the happiest part of my life worrying that it's all going to disappear.

There are so many things I love about my life right now: my yoga class, my morning walk through Dupont Circle, my breakfast of yogurt-banana-Kashi, my job and all the interesting things I get to do all day, my apartment and its bookshelf and papasan and sunset-overlook windows...

And, not unrelatedly, the fact that I'm -- for the first time ever -- earning enough money not only to survive, but to live with a sense of relative, if modest, luxury. (In other words, my bookshelf came from Target, but my soap came from Lush.) I am earning more money than my expenses, which should make me happy.

And it does. But it also makes me spend all-too-valuable time wondering if it will all end somehow.

It doesn't help that banks are collapsing and stock markets are falling as we speak, and it certainly doesn't help that we're entertaining the idea of electing a VP-cum-President who thinks that starting a war with Russia is a good idea. (Very relieved to know that Ms. Palin was, in fact, wrong about the way NATO works and we would not be "forced" into war with Russia were Georgia to join NATO.)

And it certainly doesn't help that I spend a piece of every beautiful morning walking to the office past row after row of architectural marvels, all of them only high enough so I can still see the sky, and thinking "if we attack Russia, they'll attack DC and destroy all of these pretty buildings..."

Part of me knows, obviously, that this kind of thinking is self-indulgent.

The other part knows that on some level it is true. Maybe not the Russia part (I hope not the Russia part), but certainly the idea that "this too will pass" applies to good times as well as bad.

Ultimately I'm afraid that I will lose all of this and have to crawl back into somebody's basement with the crickets and the spiders. Or have to spend a week eating a botched pot of dal because I can't afford to throw it out. Or give up this job I really like for... telemarketing.

I suppose, in the end, the only real solutions are:

1. Enjoy now while it's happening.

2. Save as much money as I can, in the process.

And vote Obama.