Tough Love; I’m Grounded

 I woke up feeling slammed by anxiety today. I’m sure it has a little to do with not going on a walk outdoors since Sunday; exercise has helped me regulate anxiety better and its absence tends to mount feelings of guilt. I haven’t been lazy since I still do strength and stretching workouts daily, but those outdoor walks tend to ground me when spending a lot of indoors makes me stir-crazy.

I’ve also decided to stop using social media for a while. I told myself for at least a week but I wouldn’t hate if I could walk away altogether. I’ve tried just saying I would use it as a tool for sharing my projects or as a way to stay in touch with friends, but more often than not, I face it with a sense of dread. How will my words be twisted? Will someone belittle my experiences? Will someone not take a joke and ruin my moods? I’ve carefully culled it with deletes and blocks and snoozes and hiding, but still it’s a gamble of depressing targeted ads or videos, group drama, bans due to shitty algorithms, and more often than not, strangers who make colossal leaps in logic and feel justified in taking out their bullshit on strangers so they don’t have to lash out at people they actually give a shit about (even though they probably take out social media induced bad moods on family as well).

There’s no particular catalyst in that decision; since I couldn’t attach a reason to the anxiety, I didn’t uselessly attach something to it. I just asked myself what exists in my life that I may be using as an excuse, that may be feeding my struggles more than lifting me up. I can say the same thing of Quora too. I started looking in hobby groups for people needing help and for months, rather than doing my own projects, I’ve just been ‘sharing my wisdom’. That is something I am consciously aware that I have been using as an excuse to not work on my own projects.

And yeah, I can tell myself to ease up. I wrote a ton of books in a short span of time. But weeks stretched into months and then years and I have become too comfortable with avoiding what used to bring me joy. I once again realize that I never draw or write anything of substance or discipline and rationalize knowledge as some sort of contribution.

Have I mentioned I never liked the word ‘contribution’? It’s always a way we bully each other and ourselves to deliver some meaningful thing to society but we rarely allow ourselves to actually define or control how we assert it. We generally let assholes and rich people (not mutually exclusive) make us feel selfish if our ‘contributions’ aren’t selfless enough, yet they ironically define selfless as benefiting themselves directly. It’s just more psychological fuckery that society tries to push to terrorize you out of finding that balance of mindfulness and happiness and into resigning yourself to some miserable assignment that never utilizes your actual best talents at all.

Like with current events, in fact. How often was I seeing people talking shit about people on unemployment because their favorite shitty fast food joints are closed and we’re not all stumbling at the opportunity to fill garbage jobs we’re overqualified for? Like dignity has a fucking price tag. Fucking hypocrites would never consider dealing with assholes like themselves either…

This is another thing I can contribute to the influence of social media. There’s a bitterness that I discarded years ago that has crept back in. Too many garbage ideas and garbage opinions are worming their way in again and I’m tired of letting any of it camp out in my head. I’m tired of letting these things influence my mood and ideas. I’m sick of them crushing my ability to embrace fantasy and romance and storytelling. 

Most of all, I’m tired of any and all distractions that give me the excuse to prolong my unhappiness. I’ve talked so much about ‘grounding’ myself when anxiety sends me into orbit but maybe I need an old-fashioned grounding. Maybe I need to sit in a corner staring at walls when I repeatedly refuse to cultivate my talents or work on projects. Maybe I need to feel boredom to the point of tears when I’m so blessed to have so many projects waiting to be done and ignore every last one of them. And for the lukewarm unknown territory of what notifications await me on these social media sites that haven’t fulfilled anything for me in a very long time. It’s just easier to blame social media than my own terrible choices.

So I’m going to confine myself to doing nothing at all if I can’t pull my priorities together any other way.

On a good note, I did actually work on Mena today. I did some more gold trim on her top and will add jewels to that next. Waiting for some pliers to come in the mail to refine the shape of her anklets before I decorate those, but there’s plenty of other tasks I can hop over too until then.

I thought about the projects that all drifted away even before the pandemic. The half written stories and books, the digital paintings in limbo, the dismantled dolls and marked crochet. Altogether it’s… intimidating and a lot. I do realize I took on more than was sustainable and I’ve made it formidable to return to. At the time, I thought creating so many choices would ensure I was never bored. After leaving them hanging, it’s only made them more intimidating to return to. I don’t remember where I was with any of them. Luckily, I always set up bread crumbs along the way, though much sturdier stuff than Hansel or Gretel, so I could redirect myself for the inevitability of memory loss if I stepped away too long.

Like with most things, I am setting limits for returning to good habits. I am not a dozen of me and setting myself up for creative paralysis is worse than just limiting what I take on to begin with. I’ve decided that those projects itching to be started will have to wait their turn in notebooks. I’ll do what I can in this life. Concerning myself with what is wasteful is useless, only the pang of regret I’ll have to live with is worth changing. I’ll be gone someday and none of it will matter. 

This is why this one and only life is precious, why I would never devalue anyone’s struggles in theirs. This is it. The nonexistence of death is exactly like before I was born. This life is simply precious for what I can make it and it’s foolish to squander it on what others want for me. I have to wear this skin and feel its pain. If I don’t vouch for what I feel and know, I do not do it justice. There is no grand design. There is simply value in this. Without reason, it is just exquisite and beautiful to feel and think and live for the present. To grow in love and kindness and to feel important. 

To fly off in a fancy of fantasy… and to ground myself again. To dream and to rest and to hope with no promise of anything.

I just want to share my discoveries and ideas and truly make informed choices. With as little distractions and excuses as possible. 

Balance is always the tricky part.