This past week, and if I’m honest with myself, the last few months, I’ve really been struggling to deal with issues related to anger.  I have always been a person with a HUGE amount of patience.  Letting things roll off has always been fairly easy for me, until this past couple of years.  Someone once told me that I should let go and tell people how I feel.  I’ve never liked doing that because as a teenager, I found my temper to be extremely uncontrollable once unleashed.  I worked hard to restrict my responses to avoid hurting others emotionally or worse… possibly physically.  I got really good at burying the anger deep down inside.

These days that anger seems to bleed to the surface.  Little things seem to pile on top of each other bringing me to a boil.  My fuse gets really short and I find myself once again back to my teenage years struggling to suppress it.  Force it back down into the dark reaches of my soul where it can’t hurt anyone but me.  I’ve been looking for ways to control these little hot needles pricking at my protective balloon.  Sometimes, its simply a matter of ignoring the irritant, which often makes the irritant more irritated.  Other times, I must remove myself completely from the situation by either walking away or by no longer taking part in an activity that exposes me to such triggers.

This past week has been a doozy as far as anger management has been concerned:  The insurance company on Monday.  A bunch of little things through out the week ranging from stubborn screws to stubborn coworkers.  The grand finale was Saturday night working security at the race track. 

Working the races is challenging enough when things are going well.  I spend a lot of time dealing with egos driven by adrenaline.  Don’t get me wrong.  Race crews and drivers can be some of the best people you’ll meet.  Once the rush of the race starts, they temporarily become unglued. Adrenaline takes over.  It has been more of a challenge this season as we’ve had many “Full Moon” nights when all the weird stuff happens.  Things have been building, gnawing away at me for about a year and a half now.  They came to a head Saturday night. I decided rather then let my wrath loose on people that probably don’t deserve it that it was time to hang it up.  I turned in my radio and my keys. 

I spent most of the day yesterday dwelling on my decision to quit.  Should I stick to my guns?  Do I want anything to do with dirt track auto racing anymore?  I finally decided that this is definitely the best thing.  I went out and took the push bar off the ATV and disassembled it.  Better that I walk away than let me temper stew and ruin my enjoyment of racing.  I can’t jeopardize blowing up there and having it affect my full time job that pays the bills.

My good ole bad disks and arthiritis in my back are only adding to the anger swelling up.  I’ve been in some rather abnormal pain for the last couple of weeks so my tolerance for other stresses on the body is limited.  I’m not sure why my back has been overly grumpy.  At one point, I thought maybe I was harboring another kidney stone in my left kidney.  The pain becomes difficult to distinguish when my back gets really grumpy although stone pain from large stones has its own unique feeling that I definitely have not had at this point.  Maybe its just my body reacting to the mental fatigue I’ve had of late.  I’m sure a lot of it comes from the subconscious knowledge that the date of Mom’s passing is looming ever closer.

I wish I had more happy thoughts to share at this point.  I scheduled vacation over the 4th of July week.  I don’t know if I’ll take off and do something since I don’t have a Saturday commitment now or what.  I have some things that need done on the bike.  Hopefully, I get those completed early on so that I can enjoy the rest of the week on two wheels. 

Until next time… “Happy thoughts… Happy thoughts… Happy thoughts”  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

~Cappy