Tracknophobia

Despite my year and a half of yoga and practicing mindfulness, I am still one impatient little monkey.

My artwork was shipped out of Fredericton on December 27th.  According to the tracking number, Vancouver delivery was estimated for Friday, January 4th, “end of business day”.

I kept tabs on the shipment’s progress and sure enough it made it to its first checkpoint in Ontario on January 1st.  I expected it to be delivered on time, but  I wasn’t super anxious when it didn’t arrive last Friday – it was, after all, an estimate.  I did, however, feel a pang of anxiety when I checked the tracking yesterday and the shipment’s progress hadn’t budged since January 1st.  I couldn’t help worrying about what kind of ill fate my wee creatures might have met in, or en route from, Mississauga, ON.  The scenarios started to fly into my mind, fast and furious:

The truck carrying my packages hit black ice and careened off the road…

The truck carrying my packages hit black ice and careened off the road into a large body of water…

The truck carrying my packages hit black ice and careened off the road into a large body of water, sinking to the bottom and water-logging everything…

The truck carrying my packages hit black ice and careened off the road into a large body of water, sinking to the bottom and water-logging everything.  Unfortunately the truck, and its entire contents, are irretrievable.

Yes, this is what your mind will do to you when your precious cargo is in the hands of strangers.  Usually I use Canada Post for all my shipping needs.  Even though I’ve had no problems with their great service, I still stress every time I ship my work.   The gallery uses SameDay – I trust their judgement, but SameDay is untried and unknown to me, which amplifies the shipping stress.

This stress is largely due to the fact that I never have appropriate insurance on the work while it is traveling (insuring artwork is a tricky biz – very subjective and necessary to have the work appraised by a professional in order to be able to make a “legitimate” claim should a need arise to do so).  Basically, I’m gambling every time I send my work out in the world; betting that a decade worth of work won’t mysteriously go missing or be irreparably damaged.

So far I’ve been lucky.

But we all know Russian Roulette can end a little messy sometimes.

Ahhh, who am I kidding?  What could possibly go wrong?