It creeps in, doubt. It slinks in unannounced like a shadowy cloud soup. At first just a bit of doldrum within perfectly fine; one tiny corner of dullness or heaviness, and then maybe another. They linger, innocently. Until suddenly they metastasise while you glanced away, in that brief moment when you relinquished your watch.

It happens to all of us. Recurrently.

For me, I often can’t explain the inception. It might have been fear awakened in a dream, or a scent in the air reminding my unconscious mind of a past experience. No matter. What I have learned is to look underneath. To pause, and allow the world around me to quiet, and to fall into secondary consciousness. To tune my attention inward and clear the whiteboard of my mind. When something arises, I simply erase the whiteboard again. As I erase and I clear, I learn there is nothing.. and that the doubt, or gloom weren’t mine at all.