What's Always In My Briefcase

Besides my usual laptop, I am now carrying a coloring book and some color pencils in my briefcase.  Sometimes my suffocating work environment can make me feel very irritable.  But to pay my bills and support my current life style, I can't quit.  I'm working on breaking free but as of now, I'm still at the same old job.  I had just realized that starting a business while holding down a job is a lot more difficult than the idea itself.  So I sometimes feel bogged down. Of course the clutter in my small apartment doesn't help to relax me either.  I did try a few days ago to review all the books that are piled up to the ceiling, I was only able to let go of one book that I bought years ago.  I spent my entire weekends reading it, then I wrote a Chinese book review on it and I sold it, surprisingly, for a very nice profit since I bought it for $1 at a closing sale.  I was going to give it away to the library or someone, but I was presented with a good offer in the end.

Now after my success of selling one book, I find it even harder to get rid of the rest of my books.  So the stress from the clutter remains.  Then with another random shuffle of the book piles, I found this coloring book that I bought from my old university bookstore.  I never even flipped it open.  Now that I have it with me all the time, I will pull it out to color whenever I feel upset, angry or negative.  It helps because for the couple minutes when I redirects my focus on coloring the flowers, it gets my mind off whatever unpleasant feeling I experienced seconds ago.  It actually takes a couple minutes and then I feel all right again. To me, it's a quick therapy particularly after being inefficiently bossed around by my supervisor.  After coloring, I can once again face my supervisor with smile and enthusiasm...

Try it if you ever feel like you are going to snap.  It only takes  a couple minutes of color to regain your cool and sanity.  It works for me.

So I Don't Have A Cracked Tooth After All

I was told during my consultation with an endondontist that the digital x-ray showed some inflammation at the root of my achy molar.  He recommended an immediate retreatment of my previous root canal at the same tooth. So I need another root canal just like I previously thought I would need.  I hope this end result is not manifested by my constant worry and thinking of another root canal.  I read a book called "The Secret" years ago.  I still haven't finished though because after reading a quarter of the book, I felt the ideas too far-fetched. But I read enough to remember that one of the theories the book stresses is that bad things happen to us because we are thinking of them and the universe operates like a shopping catalog from which we shop.  If a root canal is what I am thinking of, then it's what I will be ordering from the universe and it's what will be delivered to me, based on the universe's law of attraction.

So from now on, I better start only thinking of receiving $100 billions, so the universe will deliver the money to me instead of a root canal.  The good news of my upcoming plight of a root-canal treatment is, the tooth structure of my existing crowned molar looks great under the x-ray and there is no crack. As of now, I'm not going to lose the tooth like I had been worrying previously.  Yes, I was over worrying.

I'm Glad That I Found A Video That Explains Why My Tooth Aches While Chewing

For three days, I've been experiencing pain on my left back molar. I'm surprised because this particular molar had a root canal procedure that took out the nerve several years ago and the tooth is not supposed to be feeling anything now.  My first root canal experience was decent even though I remember the procedure took quite a while. It cost me over US$2,000 because my general dentist back then referred me to his endodontist who wasn't contracted with my dental insurance.  I had changed dentist of course even though the root canal was not as scary as I initially thought.  I was holding a grudge on my dentist back then for causing me to pay more for a procedure when it would have cost me much less if only I had done it with my dental insurance's in-network endodontist.  It took me several more sales oriented dentists before I found my current one who doesn't hard sell procedures or products, who isn't pushy in referring me to specialists, and who always explains to me and gives me the available options to let me choose.  This shows that a negative experience with dentists may very well be what I needed to find a better one, more or less like my situation with boyfriends and jobs.....

For years, I thought that my first and previous root canal was my biggest dental treatment in my life and I wouldn't need another root canal anymore.  Now that this video makes me suspect that I may have a cracked tooth and I may need a rework of my tooth, or a possible extraction if the tooth is too cracked to be saved, I'm feeling all anxious again. Feeling anxious and scared certainly isn't going to help me enjoy my meals more, but I can't help it.  It's easy to want to think positively, but controlling the fear of the unknown is a different matter.  I guess the bright side is, at least I know what is possibly causing my tooth to ache when I chew.  

To help calm my nerve down now, may be I should just remember how I was so nervous and losing sleep days before my previous root canal appointment just to find out that all that worry was pure over reaction.