I am present in this moment.

The appointment is nearly always easier than the fortnight before it. The chair, the handshake, twenty minutes of actual event — and then you are out on the pavement wondering what exactly the last two weeks were for.

Anxiety does not really live in the present tense. It lives in the run-up.

That is where nearly all of the cost gets incurred: on something that has not happened, will happen once, and will be over by half past three.

The present has one large advantage over all of that. It is the only place you are ever actually required to cope, and it comes supplied with the version of you who will be there.