Tag: anxiety

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2018 Starts Rough

We are one month in to 2018 and my life is already a rollercoaster of ups and downs.  While leaving out the extreme personal stuff, like my daily battle with anxiety, I will attempt to give you a recap of my life and my many misadventures.  For starters, I no longer work at a bar which is psychologically satisfying.  I served 5 years as the Head of Security and this only added more stress and magnified my anxiety.  I jumped off the boat at the first opportunity that presented itself.

This brought about other complications.  I had a couple weeks of free time and this was painful.  My mind rebels at stagnation.  With a bit of motivation from some minor grief, I have been writing up a storm.  I finished the first draft of a novel back in November and I have slowly started the revision process along with revising several short stories I have neglected.  Recent motivations caused me to write a screenplay, first one, and it has been revised once.  I am hoping to produce the film within the year, but it does not follow a traditional film script, and this could cause complications.

I have also started writing online articles in the hopes of starting a writing career.  I wrote a couple articles for BuzzFeed and you can view them Here.  I also have a couple articles on my LinkedIn profile and you can view those Here.  The writing I am most proud of are the articles featured on TheMighty.com.  These articles help me cope with and better understand my anxiety and it is a great place for people with any disorder to go and feel like a part of a community.  Just because you are struggling does not mean you are broken.  You can view all those articles Here.

As far as work and making money, I have actually turned down a couple jobs because I did not want to work some crap office job that I would hate after a couple years, just like every other job I have ever done.  I am trying my hand at this freelance gig and hope that it pays off.  I need more writing projects and I am already working on doing more in the entertainment industry of Tucson with my company, VaudVil.  It will be a long process and none of it will be easy, but I am so much more satisfied with my life even with all the uncertainty.  I think I am finally ready for my future.

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Sometimes You Need to Reboot

I took a personal day away from the world yesterday. I turned off notifications for all my social media on my phone. I did not message or call anyone. Other than going to work, the only interaction I had with the outside world was going to Starbucks for about an hour to do some writing. I could easily say I needed a break from all the stimuli but I think it was much deeper than that. I literally and metaphorically needed to start over, start fresh, return to default factory settings. Sometimes you need to reboot.

For nearly a week, I found myself getting more and more angry over the pitiful nonsense of messages and notifications from email and social media. Even the sound my phone makes when I get an email drove me crazy. I turned this off before my antisocial blackout. Part of me blames Facebook for changing their algorithms. There was the nonsense and there were issues from work floating in and personal issues; some from the outside world and some from within. The growing irritation with everything in the world followed by the insecurities and confusion of everything that didn’t irritate me, pushed me into a feeling of unrest and panic.

I have learned a lot about myself after learning that I have anxiety and depression. Many behaviors that are physical signs of anxiety and depression I have had since I was very young. I have had these issues since I was very small. Learning this destroyed my self-image entirely and my reaction to this was feeling like garbage and believing I was garbage to everyone in my life. Even if I had no reason to believe so, I thought I had been selfish or awful to everyone I knew or cared about.

I wanted a day of nothing; a day that I could just be in my head and nothing else. I realized that my job has a lot of external stimuli that I never have time to recoup from because I am bombarded by other external stimuli from technology. I had to get away from some of it so I took away my connection to the outside world. I turned myself off and back on again. I am sure that some people noticed my lack of interaction with the world yesterday. I am certain they want to know if I am okay. The honest answer is I am apathetic but I am okay.

The reset feels like it worked. I am ready to take on the world and everything it will throw at me but there is one thing I am concerned about. I believe in my sudden panic, I could have pushed someone away; someone I believe I know well but I still know so little of myself. I think they will understand what I had to do but are they willing to speak to me again? Whatever the future holds, I am ready for it. I am ready to keep fighting.

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The Negative Thoughts

You feel it coming. It slowly creeps in like a snake through the forest. You always feel it coming. No matter how prepared you are or how well you fight your own mind; the negativity gets inside your head. You battle as you have before and no matter how many times you win, it always returns. You tell yourself happy things; you tell others happy things hoping that will make you happy. You see someone else is battling negative thoughts and you send them messages and tell them nice things, sweet things, things you, yourself, want someone to say to you.

It never comes, at least not from those you wish those words would come from. Maybe now and then someone tells you a nice thing or smiles at you but you play it off as superficial; it is not real. This makes the negativity grow and fester and engorge your soul. You feel it taking over. You always feel it taking over. How do you fight something that is always there? How do you fight something that never leaves? How do you fight yourself? How do you keep it at bay for so many months only to have it reclaim your life in a single moment?

The negativity. The worry. Nothing is good enough. Even when you help pump someone else up and you think maybe they had a good day because of you; sure, you feel better but it is like a sugar rush. You get your high and then you crash and must force yourself out into the world. If you force yourself out, you can keep the bad thoughts away. At least, that is what you tell yourself. Staying busy is the key, you say; but being busy only postpones how you will feel when you get home.

No matter what you do, no matter what you accomplish, no matter how much you force positive thoughts into your head; you feel your life battery slowly drain. Everything starts to fall away. The little things go first. You hardly notice. Then bigger things and bigger things and the very large things slip into oblivion. They are not gone. You just have no desire to seek them out. You have no desire for any things you once desired. A shell of a person; dead empty eyes. You push yourself out of bed and take some vitamins; B-1; Thiamin.

Do vitamins help? You think they do. You think maybe they keep you from going all the way dark. You think they keep you away from the dark side. You have not been there in so many years and have no wish to return. The negativity, the darkness, the pain from within your own head; it is a tragedy that no one will ever see or hear. Even if you told everyone, they would never see the full picture, hear the full sound, think the full thoughts. You keep fighting the negativity away. You keep sending happy thoughts to the other people with your same thoughts. Always hoping they will return the favor.