The balance

I find it interesting how life sometimes seems to operate in secret balance. Events come in pairs. Something exciting paired with something anxiety-inducing. A loss with a gain, a birth with a death, a disappointment with pleasant surprise. Today I was having a pretty uneventful day at work. Unmotivated to sit at a computer and doing almost anything to avoid writing more comment letters. And then, phone rings, cell phone vibrates at the same time. I pick up the office phone and am asked to fill in for someone on a panel. I hang up the phone and look at my phone and a close friend of mine has decided to visit for my birthday. So instead of pure anxiety about public speaking on a panel of "experts" or pure excitement that my friend is coming to visit, I get this strange mix of emotions where I end up somewhere in the middle. The balance.