Signed and still reopening the contract every night: three things I got wrong

The workshop lease sat tucked inside my order book, my signature three weeks dry. Every night I pulled it out. Read clause eleven. Folded it back. At eleven o'clock I read clause eleven again, as if the words might have shifted while I looked away.

One sentence kept running in my head, and it sounded very reasonable: if you decided right, you wouldn't be worried. So worry meant I'd gotten something wrong, or that I was weak.

I used to believe that too. Believed it so completely that I never thought to check it.

My name is Nguyên, I'm thirty-seven, and I build kitchen cabinets and wooden doors to order. For ten years I worked out of a small shed in the yard behind my house. Early this year I signed for a new workshop, twice the size, with rent that came close to doubling. If you're standing in the same place, the big thing decided, the papers signed, the deposit sent, and you still open the papers at night, then here are the three things I got wrong.

This is not a guide to deciding correctly. I don't know what you're deciding, and about my own decision I still can't say, to this day, whether it was right or wrong. It doesn't tell you to chase the worry out until it's gone, either. It only unpicks three misunderstandings that had me reading clause eleven until I knew it by heart, and then reading it once more.

Does still worrying mean I decided wrong?

Eleven o'clock on a Thursday night. I was sitting on a sawhorse in the old shed, the smell of wood glue and unswept sawdust all around, the lease spread across my knee. Hạnh came out to the yard with a jacket over her shoulders.

— You've been out here since nine.

— I'm rereading clause eleven.

— You read that one this morning.

— Yeah. Just to be sure.

Hạnh stood a while longer, then went back in without another word. "Just to be sure" sounded smooth enough, until I asked myself: if reading could make me sure, I'd have been sure this morning.

The scale I built in my head

It turned out I was using the worry as a scale. Heavy meant I'd decided wrong, light meant relief. Nobody had ever calibrated that scale. I'd used it for ten years without once putting an object of known weight on it.

That night I put some on it. I listed three old decisions: buying a secondhand table saw from a man in another province, taking on a full set of cabinets for a restaurant whose owner I'd never met, and taking Tín on as an apprentice when he came over from another shop. Beside each one I wrote how heavy the worry had been back then, from one to ten. The table saw: eight, and it was right, it still cuts clean. The restaurant: also eight, and it was wrong, the place closed halfway through and I got back half my fee. Tín: five, and to this day I don't know whether it was right or wrong, since he's still working with me.

Two eights, side by side, one right and one wrong. I looked at them for a long time. My scale seemed to follow the amount of money on the paper more than it followed right and wrong. I'm only sure of that about these three decisions, mine alone, which isn't enough to say anything about anyone else. If you want to sort the worry that helps from the worry that only circles, there is a piece on telling useful worry from exhausting overthinking that runs in the same direction.

You can try this right now, in about ten minutes. Take a sheet of paper and draw two columns. In the left one, list three old decisions of yours, each with a number: how heavy the worry was back then. In the right one, write how it looks now: right, wrong, or don't know yet. You've done it properly if you finish without forcing the paper to rule on anything. The first time I felt a little deflated, because I'd hoped it would hand me an answer and it handed me three rows of numbers. By the weekend I was still worried, only now when I opened the lease I glanced at the two columns before I read clause eleven. Sáu tried it once and said he noticed no difference. Hạnh tried it and said it showed her one thing. On a busy day, one old decision is enough: two minutes, one number.

What Sáu said to put me at ease

Sáu has been in the trade for more than thirty years. The next afternoon he stopped by the shed for a glass of tea, listened to all of it, and clapped me on the shoulder. "Worrying like that means you chose right. It's the reckless ones who don't worry."

I held on to that line like a float for two days, because it was the first reassurance all week that didn't ask me to do anything. On the third day it sank. I'd just turned my broken scale to its other face: heavy worry means right, and light worry means what, exactly? The next morning the worry eased a little, and I felt lost all over again.

What helped was letting the worry stand in its own column. It tells me something about me tonight. It isn't a verdict on the lease, whichever way you read it.

Will asking one more person finally settle me?

Do this first and read the explanation after. Next time you're about to message someone about a decision you've already made, try this:

A line you can answer with a number, a date, or a name is a real question. A line that begins with "just to be sure" is a request for reassurance. Asking for reassurance isn't shameful, it only helps to know what you're asking for.

Four times in a row I couldn't write a single line, and four times in a row I put the phone away and went to sharpen my plane blade. The blade got sharper. The worry stayed exactly where it was. By the end of the week the calls to ask again had thinned out, though whether the worry had thinned I can't say, because other things crowded in that week. On a busy day, one line, pencil on a scrap of wood, no need to hunt for a notebook.

My third call to Hưng, the landlord of the new workshop, came at seven in the morning while I stood in front of the planer.

— Mr. Hưng, about clause eleven. If I give the workshop back early, what happens?

— I told you Monday. Three months' notice, that's all.

— Yes. I'm asking again just to be sure.

— That's the third time you've asked, you know. I'm not hiding anything from you.

I laughed, hung up, and felt settled until mid-afternoon. Then it found a new question: what if he says that, but his son thinks differently? I asked Sáu, I asked Đạt the painter, I asked Tư at the tea stall on the corner, who has never read a contract longer than a receipt. They all said it sounded fine. The fifth answer was identical to the first, and I heard it as if for the first time.

I wasn't asking to learn anything. I was asking to hear the word "fine" from one more mouth, and each time it held me until afternoon.

There was one person I did ask seriously, Khôi, an old classmate who works in law. He told me to photograph every page and send them over. The photos have sat on my phone since that day, unsent. I don't know why. Maybe I'm afraid he'll say exactly what I don't want to hear. Maybe I'm just lazy. I haven't been able to tell which.

Where I overcorrected

Two days later I banned myself from asking anyone anything, Khôi included. It felt disciplined, and it also spared me from opening those photos. The real question got thrown into the same bin as the plea for reassurance. The one to drop was the fifth question. Not the first.

That night I wrote on a scrap of wood: send the photos to Khôi. The scrap is still on my workbench.

Do I have to worry less before I can begin?

The first Saturday at the new workshop, I did the worst thing a workshop owner can do: I stood still and waited for the worry to ease.

Six forty-five. The floor still smelled of lime wash and damp concrete. The table saw sat on a pallet jack with two helpers steadying either side, and I stood holding a tape measure I hadn't pulled out. I said "give me a minute," then just stood there, telling myself I'd settle down first and place the saw after. Forty minutes.

Sáu arrived right then, carrying a bag of bread rolls.

— What are you waiting for?

— For the worry to ease first.

— That saw weighs more than your worry. Pull out the tape.

I pulled out the tape. The floor measured three meters forty from the wall to the post, whether I was worried or not. The tape doesn't know I'm worried. Looking back, that was the easiest moment of the whole week.

But I didn't learn it right away. That afternoon, wanting it finished so I could stop feeling swamped, I shoved the saw against the wall in the first spot I saw. The next day, carrying in a long board, I found there was no room to slide it through, and the saw had to move again, an hour and more of three people's time.

Those two ways sound like opposites and share one flaw. Waiting for the worry to leave, or racing until it goes quiet, both treat it as a job to finish before the real work. It doesn't leave and it doesn't go quiet. In the shop I found a third way: let it sit in the corner like a guest who's waiting, and keep doing my own work. Another piece, on embracing anxiety like a visiting friend, looks at it the same way.

Pick one job your hands can do, finishable in ten minutes, where you can see a difference before and after: a chalk line on the floor, an email sent, a table wiped. Set ten minutes, start, and let the worry sit where it sits. If something visible has changed when time is up, you did it right, and whether the worry stayed or went isn't part of this test. For two minutes I felt it get louder, as if someone had turned up the volume, and by the fifth minute I was so busy measuring I forgot to listen. Some days there was no fifth minute: I finished measuring and the worry was exactly as it had been, and I wrote that in my notebook, just like that. After a week the biggest change was only the wait before starting, down from forty minutes to maybe ten. On a busy day skip the ten minutes: just pick up a tool and pull the tape out a hand's width. Touching the work counts.

If you did all three and still open the paper at night

Two in the morning, a Tuesday. That afternoon I'd done everything: the two columns, the scrap of wood, the chalk line. And still my hand went searching for the lease in my order book.

I found the first reason myself. I'd made the two columns at midnight, eyes half shut, so the paper turned into a test I was grading on myself, and grading harshly. The two columns suit a lit room with a pen in hand, at the workbench, not on a bed a few steps away. I moved it to the afternoon, after lunch, and kept it.

The second reason is harder to say. Some worries have no clause to read. Clause eleven I could read. But there were nights when the worry stayed whole after clause eleven was as clear as day, and I couldn't tell what it was clinging to. I don't know. The three things above couldn't pry it loose, and I don't think that's anyone's fault, least of all yours.

If a method doesn't fit, drop it and try another. Some people find it easier to write down three worries and set a time to deal with them later. Some need to say it to a real person. I don't know which kind you are, and I don't yet know which kind I am.

This morning I swept sawdust in the new workshop, all the way to the foot of the post, where Saturday's chalk line is. It's still there, a little faded at one end.

When to seek professional support

This article is one man's story of a worry that followed a big decision. It cannot replace treatment, and I am not promising that following it will make the worry go away.

But here are a few signs you should bring to a professional, rather than carrying them alone:

• The worry runs on for weeks with no lighter days, and starts to creep into your sleep, your meals, or work you used to manage fine
• You begin avoiding ordinary things, like going to work, answering the phone or leaving the house, just because you fear the worry will rush in
• Your heart pounds, you can't catch your breath, or your chest tightens, even once: get checked to rule out a physical cause, and don't assume it is only worry
• You think about hurting yourself, even if it is just a passing thought

The last point cannot wait. Speak with someone you trust, today. The Emergency Support page explains what holds true in moments like that.

Nobody feels ashamed handing a dull plane to another craftsman to sharpen. Asking a professional to take a look is no different.

This article was created with AI assistance.