------------------------------------------------- Title: Anxiety, I guess. Date: 2022-10-25 Device: Macbook Mood: Tired, reflective, mild headache. ------------------------------------------------- I'm in kind of a strange place now. I don't think I'm very emotionally literate a lot of the time, but I'm coming to better understand the anxiety which I feel, and some of my responses to it. I've always been a procrastinator, and frequently I'm probably 'unreliable' (at least in a professional sense), but I always just figured I was either lazy, or avoiding conflict. As I get older (nearly 40!), and I begin to slow down and spend more time to understand my own mind, I think so often these are byproducts of deeper anxieties. I'll procrastinate to avoid confronting that anxiety, or I'll cancel meetings or call in sick to avoid the deeper feelings. The thought of meeting other people in the real world is horrifying to me. I like videoconferencing because I can still be in my own bubble. I hate the thought of a large crowd, or being in an open space surrounded by people. For sure I'm more in touch now with the general feeling of axniety. It's like a restlessness, or a sense that I can't focus or do a single thing until something ELSE is dealt with -- but that I can't deal with that other thing. So I end up stuck, and all I want to do is hide away and avoid any sources of stress. But I still don't understand the cause. I though for a long time that I was happy around people, that I could handle extroversion, and that I should encourage that in myself. But now I realise that being around people takes so much energy from me. I know this is a trite observation now, but I absolutely loved the pandemic lockdowns for this. I didn't have to interact, and a whole source of stress went away for me. I also realise that pre-pandemic, when I was drinking, a lot of the time I was trying to paper over the anxiety, or at least neutralise the natural introversion, or replace it with drinking, or cocaine, or whatever. Am I just wired to be alone? Blah blah, shut up. --C