I am alone in an elevator heading up for a meeting with a longtime nonprofit client. I've enjoyed a good working relationship with them for several years, but lately they've been getting a bit impatient with me as I tried to juggle their interests against the increasing demands of other projects. Today I will be presenting some entirely new graphic designs to the staff, and I feel an unspoken suggestion that the future of our working relationship probably hinges on whether they like what they see.

Only infrequently do I have to dislodge myself from my niche to head downtown and meet face-to-face with clients. Much of the work we do together -- reviewing graphic designs, planning websites -- can be done in conference calls, viewing my work through the web. It is an altogether wonderful way to do business and it makes me glad to be alive today, but the downside is that I've grown unaccustomed to the ways of the workplace. Getting dressed up to visit some enormous office building feels like a tremendous event to me, as if I'm an agoraphobic venturing out after a prolonged period of self-imposed exile. (I've ventured some concern that the circumstances of my life and business would lead me down the path to agoraphobia, but I believe spending nights on the rescue squad tends to counteract any social isolation I experience during the daylight hours.)

The upshot is that I get nervous when I have to appear in someone's office wearing reasonably professional attire with matching socks and all. As I head up in the elevator today I am feeling particularly anxious about what's to come.

Then I think: last time I was ascending in an elevator I was on my way to a high-rise apartment fire. I was a more nervous than I am right now, but not that much more nervous. How can it be that anything so mundane as sitting around a conference room table could provoke any anxiety ever again? I've been inside burning buildings, for pete's sake. Nothing but the gaping maw of death itself should cause a single worried neuron to fire in my brain. But even this little epiphany failed to quell my doubts. The contextual nature of fear is a complete mystery to me. It's as if my daytime and my nighttime lives don't have anything to do with each other.