Catastrophizing

 
Turning nouns into verbs is called "verbing." We do it all the time in English, and it's just a way of creating new words like accessing, networking, blogging, impacting, etc.  Some of these words are annoying, but I do like the word catastrophizing, even though I can't pronounce it and spell checker doesn't recognize it yet.  Psychologists made that word up to describe what they call "cognitive distortion." It means to talk about an event or situation as worse than it actually is, or as if it were a catastrophe. 

Speaking of which, after spinning down the "I'm so stupid path" and feeling sorry for myself all week, I went back to the museum on Tuesday and had my spreadsheet in tip-top shape in about an hour.  In fact, the "save" mistake turned out to be a good thing, because I caught some inconsistencies I might otherwise have missed.  Several lessons to be learned there.

Today a new Mr. Le is coming (at least that's what he promised) to cut the hedge.  I'm trying not to catastrophize this, based on past experiences.  He is very expensive! But he says he is good at hedges, and although ours will be much work he will make it look nice. What could I do, but believe him?  I liked his lack of bravado, and folks seem to approve of a Mr. Le Garden Service on the West Seattle blog. Hopefully, I called the right Mr. Le.