A dear friend wonders if I’m more anxious. Their concern stalls me. Am I?

Maybe so.

For our nation, of course. That anxiety infiltrates us all like a toxic fog. Each day bad news, worse omens. Each day Kent’s question at King Lear’s catastrophe: “Is this the promised end?”

Bad enough – though, paradoxically, that anxiety relieves me of the anxiety of futility, which afflicts many retirees. Never have I – you – all of us been more needed – for we’re all waging this war to save our state. Every effort and conversation contributes to the great cause of our lifetime. My parents and their parents felt this way about Hitler.

That dread we share. But I’ve got a new unexpected one, which makes me jumpy as hot grease. It’s about you.

Ten months ago, I felt comparatively relaxed in my companionable circle. My less than five hundred readers were family: few came, few went, they knew me from long continuance. Familiarity forgives innocuous faults.

Now we are verging on thirty thousand. In answer to my invitation, you stopped by and, bless you, stayed. More are arriving as I type. A few of you I’ve come to know from likes and comments, but many more lurk invisibly behind data. I dread disappointing you. Our association differs from a jolly jaunt with an old pal; it’s more like a first date. Yikes!

I was never a well-suited suitor. I longed to be loved and admired – who doesn’t? – but I was morbidly certain that could never occur. I must have inherited this certainty from my parents, because they had it too. Doomed to fail, why even attempt? – I’m making an ass of myself -- folks don’t really like me, they’re only pretending: such previsions of failure made me try too hard to charm, often with cringe-worthy results. Acknowledging this as a pathology does little to alleviate it. Stop being such an ass, I’d deride myself, to scant effect.

Jane, self-scrutiny, and retirement helped me to a rapprochement with my insecurities. I’d never be confident, but I needn’t fret myself into a tizzy. One reason I write is because here it’s easier to control my self-disclosure. I can edit out my blemishes before they disgrace.

Now arrive all these new acquaintances with their munificent gift of attention. I must find something fresh to share – cordon bleu fresh, not yesterday’s lettuce – and serve it better and better. I envy daily spouters with defined missions: Krugman, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, many others have to cover their beat. I have no beat but amity. Being with you makes my day – I want to make yours in return – yet I cannot eavesdrop your reactions as you read.

I know the advice I’d give to such a fretter: Relax, bro, be yourself, can’t please everyone, all you can do is your best, let the chips fall where they may, et cetera. I recite this rosary regularly – then scan my statistics in a panic, expecting defections.

Comical? To me too, were it not myself inside the clown suit. A nice problem to have isn’t nice if you’re who has it.

Please do not console me. That’s not my point here. The moral of my tale is nobody’s who they seem. We’re all got up to play a part in the human comedy. I sometimes fantasize the Pope waking in the wee hour, cranky with insomnia and grievances, taking a leak, at odds with God. It must happen, no? He’s human too. No passable person is satisfied, or even appeased, by where they are. We could always be more.