I have a diagnosis.

I think I've figured out what I've got. Or at least, I've come up with an acronym to work with. F.O.O.L. I've got it. No doubt. I diagnosed myself while laying in bed last night, my body exhausted and my mind hitting the rev limiter of 13,000 rpm.

F.O.O.L. is an overwhelming Fear Of Open Loops. Most of you will recognize the phrase 'open loops' from a time management system - it is used to describe the unresolved tasks or projects that you're juggling at any one moment. If your garage needs cleaned out and it's driving you nuts....open loop. If you sent a proposal to your boss 3 days ago and they haven't responded...open loop. The unfinished article that you started four months ago but didn't finish....you guess it: open loop.

There are open microloops and macroloops. The three I've listed are really microloops. Any of them could be resolved in one afternoon. What's killing me right now are macroloops - things that we have going on that could not possibly be resolved quickly, yet need to be (and will be) resolved. Believe it or not, our destroyed kitchen is actually on the lower third of that list for me. It's a weird prophetic symbol of what's going on in larger measures in our lives.

Macroloops are tough for me because often, the loop requires someone else to take action in order for you to find any resolved - and sometimes, you don't even know who or where that person is.

Lewis Hyde writes about the reciprocal nature of giving...how Person A gives to Person B who gives to Person D who in turn gives to Person A. In other words, Person A receives because of his own giving. He also writes about those times when Person A and Person C don't know one another, and the gift disappears from Person A's sight and influence for a moment before coming back to him. This gift 'rounding the bend of imperception' marks the truest form of gift giving, because there is nothing Person A could have done to make it happen.

I've got about three or four macroloops in my head that have rounded the bend and need to head back home. They're out there, like some huge cosmic boomerang. I'm waiting. I think I'm ready.