Tonight, Chris and I treated my friend and her boyfriend to a belated birthday dinner at an omakase restaurant I’d been wanting to try in the Flatiron. We caught up over sashimi and sake, and then ended up making a detour back to our place because Chris accidentally left a gift we got her at the apartment. It ended up all working out since it just meant extended time together in the comfort of our own home, with far less expenses under our belts since drinking and eating cake at home is always cheaper than doing the exact same activity outside.

During our catch up, my friend’s boyfriend said, “Yeah, I worry about a lot of things… like money, having enough money to do what I want to do, for the future, and all that. But us? I don’t really worry about our relationship. Not saying that I take her for granted because I don’t think I do… but well, I just don’t worry about us. I think we’re good.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I guess that’s how he feels. But I did think about it for a bit in the context of myself. What do I worry about? What makes me fearful of the future? In response to him in my head, I’m very lucky and privileged because I don’t worry about money. In fact, my entire life, I’ve never really had to worry about it, and that is a massive privilege in itself. While I never thought my parents were rich, I always knew we were comfortable in that we never had to worry about rent money, having a roof over our heads, or how we would get food on the table. We always had more than enough to eat, and a variety at that. But the saddest part about that is so many families do have to worry about that, as well as their children. And to me, I don’t think the worries of parents should ever, in a perfect world, have to be the worries of their children. And in the event that I ever had money issues, I know that Chris and I would have the support of our families. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be in that position.

I don’t really worry about work, even though I have a lot of frustrations with it, as any average person would. Circumstances and expectations frustrate me, internal politics and favoritism anger me to no end, but as far as the day to day goes, I’m not very concerned about the stability of my job; I do not fear that my next paycheck will get lost. I earn a comfortable living and have relatively good work-life balance.

Health, knock on wood, is not a concern right now. Other than the annoying colds I’ve gotten which have reignited bad coughing fits that have been reminiscent of my whooping cough days, I’d say I’m relatively healthy and fit for my age.

And similar to my friend’s boyfriend, I guess overall, I don’t really worry about my relationship with Chris. I think we are pretty stable and happy together. We have a lot of differences. He drives me crazy pretty much every single day and is one of the most annoying people I know, but he likely feels the same way about me, and to my friend’s point, that’s probably what keeps us together in the end, whether we are fully conscious of it or not. We both get bored easily; if you get annoyed by someone, it probably means you’re not getting bored.

So what does worry me? I don’t think about it very often, but I guess it’s all the things that are fully out of my control: stupid political situations like the U.S. becoming more anti people of color, anti-women, anti-immigrants; a potential World War III created by President Dipshit, climate change wiping out entire islands, cities, and states. I also worry about the things that are fully not real, but could easily become real in a second: a sudden death of someone close to me, who is going to take care of my parents one day when they are not able to take care of themselves, one of us getting a heart attack and dying while in flight on an airplane and having no help until it’s too late, contracting stage 4 of X cancer and not having any awareness of it until it’s too late. It all sounds a little ridiculous, some more than others, but when I do worry, those are the things I think about.

All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty decent set of things to worry about because I suppose this means I am fairly stable and relatively positive? I don’t always think the worst, even if it sometimes seems to be that way.