One Writer's Anxiety
(I was hoping to write about a completely different topic today, but this one is incredibly relevant to my life at the moment).
As I'm writing this, I'm anxious.
There is a persistent tightness at the back of my neck and in my shoulders that feels like someone shoving a horde of hot dull knives directly into my nerves. My breathing is incredibly short. My thoughts are consumed by a shuffling playlist of worry. My patience is wearing thinner than the denim in a pair of twenty-year-old washed out blue jeans, and if one more person asks me, "How are you today?" or tells me to "Take it easy," there's a high probability (if I'm using that word correctly), that I'll be going to jail for physical assault. Just what America needs: another brown person with an ugly mugshot and a rap sheet.
Once I've assuaged the cause of my anxiety, though, I'll feel better. That's how I've always coped with it.
I've had anxiety since I was a little kid. The first signs of it appeared when I started biting my fingernails, a disgusting habit I still engage in (when I actually have fingernails to bite). I started this habit when I was about four or five. It was an unconscious response to the surmounting fear I started experience around that time.
I was a frightened child. I was sacred of the dark, thunder and lighting (loud noises in general), the Four "S"s (snakes, sharks, spiders, and strangers), heights, needles (which I'm still not fond of, but that's another story), and, most of all, death.
Then there were the smaller things, like being late, being wrong, dentists, and doctors. Oh, and failure.
To cope with these, I developed some bad mechanisms. Nail-biting was one of them. Hair pulling was another, which I've since gotten over. (Bald spots at six-years-old are embarrassing). I kept away from people I didn't know, avoided things and experiences that even slightly unnerved me, and I quietly lived in my head.
However, I'm also an incredibly stubborn person (I couldn't be a writer, constantly facing rejection, without that character trait), so I was determined to figure out some better ways to cope with my shyness. Thus, I became the reluctant smartass of my family (see my essay on the subject for that story), using my sense of humor as a way of bridging that social gap between me and other people.
I learned that laughter is a great tool for defusing anxiety, for both the humorist and the humored. I also learned that it's best to embrace your own nature. I always felt bad that I could never be the gregarious social butterfly that some people were naturally. I didn't need an enormous circle of friends, just a handful who got me. And, when tension is high, I seclude myself and enjoy my own company, along with a book, a good TV show, or some music.
I also educated myself out of many of my fears. I learned that the dark wasn't anything to be afraid of--it's merely the "absence of light". I learned what thunder and lightning were and how to handle loud noises. I became a nerd when it came to spiders, sharks, and snakes (though I'm still afraid of snakes because...well...venom). I can handle heights (the trick is not to get too close to edge and if you do, keep your balance). I still don't like needles, but they remain the only way doctors can administer vaccines (and I don't want to know what measles feels like).
I learned that death is inevitable; be aware of it, don't think about it too much, and use the time you have to do what you enjoy. Dentists and doctors--it's better to live well with good teeth than to die. Time management and getting enough sleep helped with the lateness thing, and being wrong can sometimes be a good thing since you might learn something.
It worked. These days I can manage my anxiety fairly well. I plan things out, I try to avoid surprises, and I don't overburden my mind with thoughts of things I can't control.
There is still one thing that triggers my anxiety though: writing.
Because writing is such a cerebral, solitary activity, I think many writers suffer from anxiety and mental illness in general. The insecure nature of publishing and the worries about outside reaction to their work doesn't help this either.
I'm no different in this regard. However, I'm aware that there are certain things I can't control. I can't control reaction to my work. I can't control whether the odds of publication will be in my favor on a given project. I can only control one thing: whether or not I keep writing.
I get anxious when I don't write (or rather when I haven't written). I discovered this was a problem when I was a college kid. Each day that went by when I didn't write was a bad day. All the things I described earlier about feeling anxious would pile on me in an avalanche fashion.
There was only one remedy for this: to write. So, everyday, I write. This is my method of coping with my writer's anxiety. I have a quota of a minimum number of words--1000--that I try for with my fiction. More often than not, I make it. On nonfiction days (like today), I try to finish the thought I'm attempting to get across, and then I quit for the day.
The reason I was anxious today was that I hadn't had a chance to write (and I had things, like this blog entry, to finish). But now, here are my words, strung coherently across the page. My anxiety has eased. Still, I'm always aware that this is a persist issue with which I'm always going to have to contend. But I've found my strategies to do so, and thus far they're working.
As I'm writing this, I'm anxious.There is a persistent tightness at the back of my neck and in my shoulders that feels like someone shoving a horde of hot dull knives directly into my nerves. My breathing is incredibly short. My thoughts are consumed by a shuffling playlist of worry. My patience is wearing thinner than the denim in a pair of twenty-year-old washed out blue jeans, and if one more person asks me, "How are you today?" or tells me to "Take it easy," there's a high probability (if I'm using that word correctly), that I'll be going to jail for physical assault. Just what America needs: another brown person with an ugly mugshot and a rap sheet.
Once I've assuaged the cause of my anxiety, though, I'll feel better. That's how I've always coped with it.
I've had anxiety since I was a little kid. The first signs of it appeared when I started biting my fingernails, a disgusting habit I still engage in (when I actually have fingernails to bite). I started this habit when I was about four or five. It was an unconscious response to the surmounting fear I started experience around that time.
No matter how brash or confident I seem to appear to be here on the page, away from it in life, I am--always have been, and likely, always will be--a painfully shy person. Doing new things, meeting new people, and getting outside my comfort zone (which basically ends at the threshold of my house), have never been easy for me
I was a frightened child. I was sacred of the dark, thunder and lighting (loud noises in general), the Four "S"s (snakes, sharks, spiders, and strangers), heights, needles (which I'm still not fond of, but that's another story), and, most of all, death.
Then there were the smaller things, like being late, being wrong, dentists, and doctors. Oh, and failure.
To cope with these, I developed some bad mechanisms. Nail-biting was one of them. Hair pulling was another, which I've since gotten over. (Bald spots at six-years-old are embarrassing). I kept away from people I didn't know, avoided things and experiences that even slightly unnerved me, and I quietly lived in my head.
However, I'm also an incredibly stubborn person (I couldn't be a writer, constantly facing rejection, without that character trait), so I was determined to figure out some better ways to cope with my shyness. Thus, I became the reluctant smartass of my family (see my essay on the subject for that story), using my sense of humor as a way of bridging that social gap between me and other people.
I learned that laughter is a great tool for defusing anxiety, for both the humorist and the humored. I also learned that it's best to embrace your own nature. I always felt bad that I could never be the gregarious social butterfly that some people were naturally. I didn't need an enormous circle of friends, just a handful who got me. And, when tension is high, I seclude myself and enjoy my own company, along with a book, a good TV show, or some music.
I also educated myself out of many of my fears. I learned that the dark wasn't anything to be afraid of--it's merely the "absence of light". I learned what thunder and lightning were and how to handle loud noises. I became a nerd when it came to spiders, sharks, and snakes (though I'm still afraid of snakes because...well...venom). I can handle heights (the trick is not to get too close to edge and if you do, keep your balance). I still don't like needles, but they remain the only way doctors can administer vaccines (and I don't want to know what measles feels like).
I learned that death is inevitable; be aware of it, don't think about it too much, and use the time you have to do what you enjoy. Dentists and doctors--it's better to live well with good teeth than to die. Time management and getting enough sleep helped with the lateness thing, and being wrong can sometimes be a good thing since you might learn something.
It worked. These days I can manage my anxiety fairly well. I plan things out, I try to avoid surprises, and I don't overburden my mind with thoughts of things I can't control.
There is still one thing that triggers my anxiety though: writing.
Because writing is such a cerebral, solitary activity, I think many writers suffer from anxiety and mental illness in general. The insecure nature of publishing and the worries about outside reaction to their work doesn't help this either.
I'm no different in this regard. However, I'm aware that there are certain things I can't control. I can't control reaction to my work. I can't control whether the odds of publication will be in my favor on a given project. I can only control one thing: whether or not I keep writing.
I get anxious when I don't write (or rather when I haven't written). I discovered this was a problem when I was a college kid. Each day that went by when I didn't write was a bad day. All the things I described earlier about feeling anxious would pile on me in an avalanche fashion.
There was only one remedy for this: to write. So, everyday, I write. This is my method of coping with my writer's anxiety. I have a quota of a minimum number of words--1000--that I try for with my fiction. More often than not, I make it. On nonfiction days (like today), I try to finish the thought I'm attempting to get across, and then I quit for the day.
The reason I was anxious today was that I hadn't had a chance to write (and I had things, like this blog entry, to finish). But now, here are my words, strung coherently across the page. My anxiety has eased. Still, I'm always aware that this is a persist issue with which I'm always going to have to contend. But I've found my strategies to do so, and thus far they're working.
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