A Waste of Time

It always feels like there's something to be worried about.

Whether it's money or relationships or work or productivity or the bigger life questions, I can usually get attached to stress about one thing or another. Or many things all at once. I've made it a mission in the past year or so to deal with my anxiety. I try to be nicer to myself. I try to have patience. I meditate. I spend a lot of quiet time alone.

That has been a big shift. I spend a lot of time alone. I try to keep all noise--literal and figurative--away from me as much as possible. I have found that I really don't like the noise all that much any more. And I'm better off for not having it around.

Yet, even when I've reached that perfect state of Zen tranquility, I'll get on Facebook or I'll get an email or I'll have a conversation with someone I know. And then I listen to their anxiety. Hey, I realize that my friends have the right to be worried and to complain. I want to be there for that. And I'm normally happy to do so. But I wonder what else we could all be doing if we spent a little less time worrying.

I've tried to implement that philosophy in my life, which is why I spend a lot of time alone. I find that the greatest obstacle to getting work done is anxiety and fear. I'm a fast writer. Last week, I wrote 36 pages in a day. I also wrote a ten page play. I wrote ten new pages of a play I had started the week before, when I wrote 19 pages. When I get to work, the work happens quickly. But it's usually about the weeks I spent worrying about whether the idea was good enough. Or when I was afraid to start. Or when I just wanted to eat or be distracted or masturbate or do something other than write. I accept that a lot of writing is filled with both low-grade and high-grade anxiety. And when I do other things, I try to be fully engaged in them so that my focus is on where I am at and not at where I'd rather be. That's the source of anxiety. I'm doing something but I really should be doing this other things that's due and I shouldn't waste my time.

But if I'm loving masturbation or loving watching The Real Housewives then I'm not wasting time. I'm engaged in an activity that has a purpose. That purpose could be laughter or ejaculation or distraction. But it's important to give those activities importance and focus as well. I find that it's necessary to disengage from parts of my life sometimes and just enjoy other parts. Then I have no anxiety about it. I'm happy where I am, even when it's wasting time. That's what I'd like to think I think most of the time. I'm successful more often than not these days, but even that has taken years. I try and trust in the fact that when I work, I work quickly.

But this new phenomenon has taken hold lately. I have a lot more anxiety in the form of depression when I finish something. When I should be taking a break, I feel sad. I just want to curl up and not talk to anyone. I'm short tempered. I'm nasty. I'm not fun to be around. I have a temperamental fit. It's ugly. And it usually lasts a few days. I had a reading of a new play last month. And in the four to five days afterwards, after an eight month process, I was so hard on myself. I instantly felt like a loser. Like I hadn't been productive. Like I was wasting my time. Every negative feeling about myself I could feel, I felt. And I'm self-aware enough to know that's not a good thing. As much as I try not to engage in that spiral, it had its grasp on me. It was really awful. And that feeling seems to be getting worse.

I'm getting better at feeling balanced in most other areas of my life, but that was a high-grade anxiety experience. The romantic artist in me says that it's because I care so much or because I put so much work into the play or because the play was the best thing I had ever written. That's the myth, right? That art cuts you open and makes you suffer and then you need to let yourself heal. And I believe that one has to give something of themselves. Absolutely. And maybe it just is the relationship that we have to our work. It's the act of creation. And when someone gives birth, they have a post partum experience. They're also cut open. They have also given up a lot of energy and just need to rest. And the depression comes up just because they're so tired. But that doesn't make the emotional reaction any easier to deal with.

I try to be the optimist because that feels better than depression. I try to focus where I need to focus. I try to make work a daily thing. SO that it doesn't feel precious or special. It feels routine and something that just happens every day. The more special it feels, the greater the loss when it's not there. Every day is not a trip to Disneyland. But it's a work in progress for me. The thing that seems to be working is more work. And it could be just a little each day until I work up to being fully productive again. But even that has an ebb and a flow. I guess I need to get better at riding the wave.

I am grateful for the generosity of friends.
I am grateful for the people who hold me accountable.
I am grateful for love and well-wishers.
I am grateful for a daily practice of work.
I am grateful for the constantly productivity.
I am grateful for the creative habit.