I Mean the Game of Going Insane

In comments, Anon. 5:14's talking about the howling fantods:

I'm (happily but stressfully) in the middle of my tenure evaluation, and I've been remembering lately just how much worse--worlds worse--l I felt during my two years of being on the market and not getting a job. (Sometimes three times really is the charm.) One day just after finding out, for the second year in a row, that I wasn't going to get a job, I was sitting at the front of the classroom looking at my watch to see if it was time to begin. I looked down and saw the socks I was wearing. They were perfectly ordinary socks. No different from any of the other socks I usually wear. But I was gripped with a deep, undeniable feeling that they were The Wrong Socks. I was wearing The Wrong Socks. I couldn't do anything right. Not even socks.

Howling.