Severe case of midlife crisis

Yep, some pretty dark thoughts were swirling in my head. The good thing about it was that my usual worries lost importance.

I had a similar skin cancer scare recently. Mine ended up being malignant, but it was successfully excised and a lymph node biopsy showed it hadn't spread there yet, so I'm probably OK now. This bit of your article really resonated with me. While I was waiting for the results of the lymph node biopsy I was constantly thinking of all the little weird feelings, aches, and pains that I probably experience all the time and assume are benign, and magnifying them in my mind to the point where I felt sure my body must be riddled with melanoma and I was going to get bad news. My worries shifted from my usual anxieties to trying to come to terms with the idea that I might be gone soon and all the things I needed to do to make sure my wife wouldn't be left in the lurch on all the various things I handle for us (email subscription, self-hosted password manager, all my auto-renew domains and various tech services that could be canceled, stuff like that). I had a similar epiphany to yours, where I realized my normal problems and anxieties can be rather trivial and I shouldn't let them control me as much as I do. It also made me realize that there are a couple life goals that I've had since I was a kid that I've been putting off forever and need to get cracking on.