Living at Capacity
“You know, I wrote it like this because if I don’t do it this way, then how do I explain to people that I just ran away?”
“You don’t have to.”
“What, you mean like lie?”
“It’s not a lie. You said it yourself. You’re a strong person.”
“This didn’t happen.”
“Yeah but… Star Wars didn’t happen and that’s a rad movie. Just because you’re in this class, doesn’t mean that you can’t have secrets. You know, you should be able to be the person that you say you are. Like I’m Barry Block. I’m an actor. You’re Sally Reed, and you stood up to Sam. Yes you did. It’s ok.”
The last 4-5 months have been a blur, yet I have learned so much. I have pushed myself even further than normal and what is expected of me at work, and I am at a point of being ahead of what an executive director was thinking.
I’ve accomplished so much I think in my own personal life too. The worries of my life leading up to this year were more about trying to get over the career hump and doing something I feel good at. I am so good at shooting myself in the foot. The worries now for me are more about, ok I’m doing all of these things, where can I cut back? What do I actually want to do that I sincerely enjoy or find stimulating? Here were the goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the year:
- Pass the PMP – scheduled for June 2nd and totally not prepared.
- Learn to play “Phantom of the Opera” by Iron Maiden on drums – work in progress
- Put together a “Before and After” of the condo we are remodeling, and maybe work on another condo – completed. Both condos are done and listed on Airbnb. Wrote the post a few months ago. May do a third condo if we get it at a low enough price worth taking a risk on.
- Execute a successful family reunion – this is on pace to happen. We have about 35+ people confirmed to go to Rehoboth Beach for the 4th of July weekend. There will be a lot of lessons learned, but for now, holy shit this is kind of crazy that people are buying in.
- Pay off master’s loans, stay out of debt, and save up an emergency fund – high interest master’s loans paid off earlier this year! I’m staying out of/managing debt, just need to stop going out often. I’ve saved up $5k so far to my emergency fund. Putting aside $1k/month from each paycheck has added up!
- Plan out a book – I have instead written an outline for a movie script. I don’t know when I’d ever take this on, but the idea is put on paper.
- Practice and make better my daily habits – work in progress and significantly need help
- Make a Tableau workbook like the Beatles Analysis, but do it for Phish – I may punt on this one. Don’t have the time. Start second master’s in August, would be too much.
Something I’ve kept coming back to a lot recently is that at some point you have to walk the talk you’ve always spoken. When you’re just running to try your best and don’t have time to think, and you’re getting positive affirmation or tons of support from the people around you who want to help you succeed (or they don’t want to let you down, whatever it may be), it’s the best feeling. It’s like all that time I spent reading and going down whatever rabbit holes ended up actually being beneficial in the moments I needed it most. Who would’ve thought?
But… I have been completely consumed by this project I’m working on + all of the other things, and at times I feel absolutely horrible. That I am letting down the people around me or rubbing my problems off onto them. That I am not doing enough. That it will amount to nothing in the end and I will have been forgetting about my own health for nothing.
It’s hard to explain because a lot of times, you just go. Like, you just… go. At other times… like, it’s only when I get some wind-down time does it feel like a wave crashes and all of a sudden I shake at all the times I ever did something that was wrong or awkward or like why the fuck did I do or say that.
It’s a balancing act.
I call it living at capacity. And I want to do it less often.
The starting point of recognizing any of this involves knowing everything that preceded it. All the times you said something that was super cringeworthy. All of the decisions you made that you replay back in your head like why did you do that. All of the bad habits you formulated that you knew were wrong, and time passed and you said you’d get around to fixing it but never did.
You want nothing to do with that anymore. You want to move on to your better self. Or at the least, compensate strongly in one area for the other places in your life where you are struggling. But you have to face it.
There’s a Bill Hader quote that stuck out with me recently. When he was being interviewed at Google, he answered someone’s question about making friends with anxiety. She asked how it has influenced his ability as an entertainer/creative person either positively or negatively.
“You have to manage it. You just kind of go, oh this is a thing I have and it’s not going away. You can take all the drugs and all the stuff to kind of, and it just puts like a lid on it, you know? People are like, just take some klonopin, brah! Take a xany, man! And you do it and it puts a lid on it, and the minute you don’t take it it’s like BLLAAHHHHHHHH. So, you just kind of like accept it, you know? Yeah I do… this sounds crazy, I do think of it as like a weird little creature that’s gnawing my face. And I just go, ok, we’re friends. And you just accept it. And you know what’s a thing that’s kind of great that I learned is, I’m not anxious BECAUSE. Take out the because, take the narrative out of it. Just go, oh I’m anxious right now. And I just go, oh I’m anxious right now, I’m being anxious right now. I’m not anxious because I have to do this Google talk. I’m just, oh this is me anxious. And then it kind of like dissipates. And it happens a lot. Like, I’ll get angry, and I’ll get frustrated, and you just go, I’m frustrated. And you just kind of hold it in your hand, and oh, that’s what frustration looks like. It really, for me it really works. Because it’s the narrative. I’m frustrated because… I can’t kill Anthony/NoHo Hank laughs. And that somehow has helped me, but it’s a process. You never feel like it’s an endgame. You just have to know, oh this is the new thing.”
The main thing I’ve thought a lot about over the last couple of years is that I want to be more forward with my problems and weaknesses. I am not some macho patriarch. I am a regular person who is flawed in all the beautiful sorts of ways that make us human. Instead of suppressing that with a title behind my name or by watching a 15 second video of a cute dog, I want to embrace and face it more now. I am who I am. I do what I can do. It’s ok for me to say when I’m not feeling well or I’m at my limits. I want to express myself better. I know my intentions are good for the most part.
After watching that Bill Hader interview, I started doing some reflection off and on over the past few days. Coupled with that interview plus this Reddit thread, here’s what I came up with (forgive my rambling please! I'm just trying to formulate/jot down what I feel/do so I can better confront those things going forward):
My anxiety is why my last girlfriend got tired of me.
- It’s ok. I’m about to meet with two different girls this weekend lol.
- I remember everything about the weekend where she couldn’t do it anymore. I was not feeling well whatsoever but she wanted to go to the beach for a day. For me, it was a cumulation of finishing up a difficult semester, dealing with transitioning to a horrible new manager who gave me shit constantly, being in a financial rut, and other things. The entire trip, I second-guessed and overthought every single one of my thoughts and decisions. I was horrible to be around, and I probably wanted to stay in bed the whole time. It’s in these moments where seeing other people smile hurts you inside because you wonder how they can be there. Though it’s really shitty on her part, I also don’t blame her for losing patience. I just have to communicate better with the next person. That leads me to my next thought.
My anxiety is why I am scared to let people into my life, because then they’ll have to deal with what I deal with by extension.
- This one hurts me a lot because there are a lot of great people who I’ve met and pushed away. I’m grateful for the people who I am still friends with. I’ve also gotten better about accepting that there are just some people you can say you don’t like for whatever reason, and that’s ok and life will go on.
- I remember writing out my thoughts on my phone at a bar one night. Someone I knew from college came by to say hi and asked how I was doing. I showed him my note (probably shouldn’t have lol). He was almost kind of repulsed as to how I could be such a downer, and that I needed to cheer up. I keep hearing from other people that life isn’t as bad as I make it out to be. It’s really difficult to be chill when you latch onto the one bad thing you did that day and overthink it to death.
- Here’s the thing: they’re not wrong, but they’re not right either. As Bill implied at Google, it’s this beast you live with and you can never know when it is going to hit you, nor for how long. I can be out having a good time, and then all of a sudden I just don’t want to be out anymore. Or, I am scared to try new things not because I’m actually scared of trying something new or fearful I won’t be good at something, but because the anxiety is so high leading up to that moment and I don’t want to feel that.
- On that last part, I’ve come to realize that paying an expert to walk me through something initially like training wheels on a bike has helped significantly and I do not feel anxiety there as much. It also makes me realize why I have such an obsessive personality. When I’m comfortable with something, I get really into it. Like this guitar solo that’s my latest earworm. Hey Trey! https://youtu.be/4s1LMmvyyXs?t=346
It takes a lot more energy to be positive and energetic than I think most people realize.
- I can talk with people for however long, but then afterwards I will completely crash.
- I’ve seen this issue noticeably arise/be brought to my attention with my family a lot (or maybe I just feel that way because I’m overthinking it). Brown people have no idea about mental health. They’re all just crazy and expect you to live through that because they did it and that’s just how life is. So if there’s ever a moment where I’m just down and don’t feel like interacting, or I’m quiet because I don’t have any thoughts formulating or don’t feel like engaging, they think something is wrong with me.
- This is one I don’t know how to deal with other than to just say how I’m feeling in a moment. I can definitely be better about that.
I talk a lot, but I think it’s more about keeping me sane.
- I have been a lot more conscious recently about shutting up. It stems from how as soon as I wake up, my mind starts racing and it goes that way all throughout the day. It feels like I have to talk just to get things out of my head.
- Part of dealing with this is learning when to ignore things (and consistently practicing better breathing, but that is a different discussion). Developing better relationships with my friends has helped with that a lot. You know each other really well, and there are some things you’re like eh, whatever not a big deal. You also know when you need to get something off of your chest. Also, having a good bit of friends with varying interests helps a lot because I can talk to one person about one thing that another person would find weird, or take mild interest in but not understand your fixation.
My anxiety creates this never-ending loop.
- When I do something, I almost get scared of completing it all the way because I overthink every little aspect and question everything. So some things (a lot of things) I never finish because the anxiety is too much to bare. But then there’s the anxiety that results from not finishing something.
- On this one, the problem is that I jump from one thing to the next because that’s just how I am. Though more recently, I have tried to focus on a few things and trying to be really good at those instead of being ok at a lot of things. That has been rewarding in its own way because I’ve been able to solve problems over time, like figuring out a drum rhythm after 2-3 months of thinking about it.
- The balance I have to live through is to check some boxes off of a list where needed (administrative tasks), but otherwise trying to do what I actually want to. Sometimes I can combine the two like my list of goals for 2019.
I want to get better, though. I can’t keep living like this without addressing any of these things.
- I’ve started recognizing behaviors of mine that cause my anxiety and feeling of living at capacity to skyrocket.
- I haven’t gambled since my miraculous second week of April run (March Madness + last day of NBA season). The March Madness championship game days was one of the worst anxiety days of my life. It was the day that started all of this rethinking that I don’t want this anymore. It’s in my past, but it doesn’t define me.
- I am also taking this week to stop drinking coffee/caffeine. Cutting out processed things is another thing I want to do. One thing at a time.
- The biggest thing is that when you’re so used to living one way, it is very difficult to transition into something else entirely. There are some things you can accept as normal, and that’s just who you are. There are other things you can do that will actually make you happy and feel better. And it’s ok to let that into your life and just be happy all the time. It doesn’t have to be that I don’t deserve happiness, or that I have to earn it, or that it’s some fleeting thing.
That’s a lot and I’m sure there’s more, but that’s the gist of it. If you made it through that, thanks for reading and please let me know if you’re dealing with anything similar. I am happy to listen.