#anxietyissues

I’ve been walking around with a frown on my face.

Especially when the sun is hiding behind the clouds, when it isn’t bright enough to warrant my eyebrows furrowing so deeply in the middle of my face. 

I’ve realised that I walk around like I’ve got a fucking chip dancing on my shoulder. Like I’ve got something to say. I’m more serious than any of you. I have a sadness you’ll never see. I have fear that you’ll never know. Why do I do this? The more I notice it, the more I notice it in others. 

I think the most sensitive among us tell ourselves stories about who we are, as a kind of buffer between us and the rest of the world. If there’s a soft barrier of fluff, protecting us from all the plastic and all the pollution and idiocy and noise, nothing can get in, right? We’re a naturally resistant bunch; resistant to trying, resistant to the journey, resistant to the work. All because, deep down, trudging past all our past experiences, our sad memories, the crushing feeling of historical failures, of genetic behaviours and inherited pain, at the very core of everything, we’re afraid to fall. 

Neither has it escaped my notice that we also tend to have the most ideas, we really do try the most, we really do work hard to move past that resistance. We just give ourselves a really, really hard time about the work that we do do.

I had a really great conversation with a friend recently. He mentioned his own resistance, and it gave me pause. How much do I resist? What gives me the most anxiety? I tell myself fables about how I don’t need to try, I’m quite content and happy without all that, thanks very much. I like my quiet life (I do, as it happens), but what was all this for if I’m just gonna jack it in because I enjoy my living room?!*

*I did actually think this.

So as our feet dragged around in circles around the colourful streets of Soho, it occurred to me that my fear would literally do anything it took to keep me contained in a similar cycle. Conditioned by it, never moving, never progressing. The people I admire the most are the ones that just do, and yet doing gives me so many willies I’m considering filing a lawsuit against the very sentiment.

#willies

Oddly enough, things that are well within my remit are the very things that I instinctively reject. Push against first, think about second and finally do third...reluctantly, hesitantly. I’m not leaving that part out. The most successful of us would have us believe they over-came their obstacles to achieve their goals, but my bet is that even when they did it, they felt sick about it. Nobody is ever sure of the outcomes of their work when they’re doing it, it’s only when there is a result that we can lament over our past anxieties. But those anxieties never go away; they’re just hovering around the next goal. Accepting that is important, and I know this because I’ve been known to be very smug about my good days, and humbled in my bad. So I have to do the work every day to hardwire the brain to make me happier. 

The path to happiness is a constant, quiet journey. I’m only just coming to realise that. So while I’m trying not to guilt myself about my fear, I’m focusing on doing the things that I’m good at, instead of worrying about getting it wrong. It starts by doing. Doing a shitty job, doing the bare minimal of what someone has asked of you, it’s just trying. Nothing more. Personally, once I’ve climbed that first barrier, I realise that the drop isn’t really that high. When you’re climbing an actual cliff above the ocean, it’s not scary. You can fall back in the water, but it won’t hurt so long as you don’t bash your head off the rocks and drown. What I’m saying is, you just get another foothold and learn where not to step, what not to do this time, but, you know, the journey just isn’t straight forward. Life isn’t a parallel line between where you started and where you finish. The line is traversing and squiggly and sometimes doubles back, checks itself, surges forward, stops for a while. Life is not linear, one point to another. It is constant. Going, doing, moving, moment after moment.

It’s easier to stay in bed. It’s easier not to do. It’s easier not to try. You don’t miss anything.

It’s also way better to get up and see the warm razors of sunlight coming through your curtains and the little dust motes dancing within it. It’s way better to hear the annoying cawing of two magpies chattering at 6am. It’s so much better to go for the run and see the old guy on his too-small moped with a half smoked cigarette hanging from his mouth with a trail of traffic behind him and minding his own sweet business, or the little girl riding what must have been a ridiculously expensive display-of-wealth-furry-horse-on-wheels in a South London park. It’s so much better to have written the song, to have written the book, to have looked someone in the eye and smiled and received one back. It’s so much more fulfilling to have gone to bed knowing you tried. 

Even if it was the bare minimal. Even if you made a mistake; the mistakes just carve out the path ahead so you don’t make them again. And if you do make them again? Doesn’t matter. You didn’t miss anything.

I’ve resisted trying for a long time. Resisted seeing friends, resisted committing to plans, resisted making myself vulnerable with the people I love. Resisted talking back, resisted standing up for myself. Resisted writing, singing, making. Resisted my art. 

So part of the battle is recognising when we’re resisting doing the thing because we’re afraid.

And so fucking what? We’re all afraid. Everyone’s afraid. The vast majority of people in the world don’t know who you are, and even if they happen to, what makes you think they’re not so wrapped up in their own worlds to really care about yours? They’re too terrified about their own. So you might as well just do it, right? Everyone fucks up. Nobodies looking. What makes us so bloody precious?

I need to stop treating myself like a faberge egg and more like the relentless and resilient oak tree that I am. It’ll take some work.

Not doing means I’m not living.

So the leaves are finally starting to drop off the trees around here, giving me all the autumnal/winter pinterest-your-way-to-Halloween vibrations. Nature has a canny way of living and dying and getting rid of what it doesn’t need, taking time out, taking a rest and putting its feet up while the cold weather sets in. It doesn’t need to tweet about it, or update an instagram story with the caption “Branches are dying off lolz.” Autumn marks the beginning of death and decay, it won’t be long until we start posting pictures of our favourite streets coated in leaves (I’m into it). It’s amazing; so many of us love the colours of the fall but in essence, it is the death of living things that we celebrate, so that everything can start anew next year. That’s reality, and I think that’s beautiful. 

Here’s my point. I wish social media would take a break; I wish it would curl up in front of the fire, maybe die off and come back better for everyone next year. I know so many people who now log out of their apps, only to be sent emails from the apps themselves trying to help them “get back online.” This happened to me two weeks ago. 

I don’t know whether I was suffering from PMS, or if I’d been sitting around too long, but my anxiety came on through flood gates I’d obviously forgotten to shut, so it took me a little while to realise the frequency had returned and was buzzing underneath everything before I tried to counteract its presence. I’ve realised I find it quite difficult trying to relive just how my anxiety feels in those moments, because everything seems like a big grey, squishy worm that bleeds into each passing minute, floating midair, making the atmosphere dreadful and vehr wormy. So there are no definitive emotions. Just worry, dread, pressure around my brain and the existential worry that I am not enough.  What I can recall, though, is that I was on social media so often I must have feared it was going to miss me. I have noticed that in times of my quarter life existentialism, the less I have going on around me, the more I automatically, without thought or intention, find myself immersed balls deep in social media. It takes around an hour of surfing absolute dink before I even realise how deep my balls are in the first place. I scrolled mindlessly, and through that open window of my phone, that little ignorant bitch named anxiety flew in as easily as a mother-fucking pidgeon, and I felt just as bad as that time I accidentally pronounced Pinot Grigio as Pee-not-Gri-guy-O. But alas! What did I do, but continue to swipe my poor little finger, as if it would find some answer, some pick-me-up that would relieve the overwhelming feeling of I-HAVE-FAILED (and believe me, when I ordered a Pee-not-Gri-guy-O to that waitress in the restaraunt I did feel that same sense of existential failure). I couldn’t explain to you or myself what I was looking for, and yet the more I found myself looking the worse I felt.

Let me tell you, that shit is as dangerous and addictive as gambling. 

Did you know, Twitter was the first application to develop the pull-to-refresh feature, which was essentially mimicry of a slot machine? It wasn’t long before all the others followed suit (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat et al); ever wonder why you keep refreshing your pages? Do you hope to see something new? Something more beautiful? Something you’ve been tagged in? What’s the difference between you and the fella in Aspers, feeding in twenty after twenty into the machine, in the hopes that this time, this time, he’ll be rewarded? What about the woman who keeps getting four fifties changed at a time, laying all her chips on the roulette table, and losing it all, only to change more money, because this time, this time, she might win? 

It’s not about the money any more. It’s about seeking the reward, the win, the fulfilment, and in social media’s world, validation.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/08/social-media-copies-gambling-methods-to-create-psychological-cravings

So I’ve known for a while the power the internet and social media apps have had over me; all the articles I read in research for my novel really opened my eyes. Sometimes, though, I’m just as good as all the other people on the bus; neck craned, eyes cast downwards, quickly researching Ariana Grande’s insta feed to salivate over her aesthetic, or to see why everyone thought she was responsible for Mac Millers death (hint: she wasn’t). It’s because, just like everyone else, I’m totally addicted to my phone.

Aside: I’m not blaming my bout of anxiety on social media, I’m just noting that it is a huge factor in how I perceive my life.

I use social media as a drug for my restlessness, and I receive sweet fuck all from it. Every time I look, it’s a reminder of how little I’m working, because I’m spending all my time thinking about working and looking at other people succeeding. It integrates this sense of failure, the smallness of my successes look in comparison, to be puney and frail. My lovely living room, amidst the quaint backdrop of my London suburb, looks boring against other artists hanging out in studios and lounging against LA backdrops online. What a failure I am; I’m eating into my savings to pay rent and afford food, I can’t buy that nice contouring set they’re selling to look the part, I’m flogging my clothes on Depop for spare change, I can’t afford flights there, I can’t afford any of this and I’m still chasing this pathetic goal of making money from my art. Every time I leave my parents house, my Dad hugs me and says, “Keep your head up, it’ll happen,” even if I haven’t spent the last two days complaining, even if I’m content, even if I run a bloody half marathon. Everyone’s still aware that she’s still trying, she’s not there yet. It’s really quite easy to lose yourself in those thoughts, it’s easy for me to reel all this off for the sake of a blogpost, but in the end I have to remind myself of the reality.

And that is, I’m fine. I’ve been doing better than I have for a long time. I’m excited, I’m getting motivated, I’m trying, I’m earning, I’m positive about the future. I’m looking after myself.It’s uncertain at times, but life is uncertain. I’m not stepping forward to play the victim in the play of me life. But that’s the kind of outlook I have in hindsight when I haven’t been on my phone all day, because social media does not help my anxiety, or hinder its progress at all. It encourages it. Instagram feeds off of my insecurity and isolation, Twitter feeds off my desire to be all knowing, Facebook creates the illusion that I’m connected when in reality I’m more separated from everyone on there than I’ve ever been.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/19/popular-social-media-sites-harm-young-peoples-mental-health

As a generation, we’re so very disenfranchised but we’re all part of this huge market. It feels as though we’re connecting, and don’t get me wrong, social media is great for self expression and identity and openness. But at the end of the day, it’s a business, and we’re it’s blind, salivating customers. It’s a marketplace for everyone to sell themselves, even when they have no goods to offer. We’re advertised products that an algorithm predicted we’d like, we’re told to post daily to reach more followers, but most of them are bots or strangers who won’t look at your page more than once. Everyone follows each other but we don’t support or give like we used to. I get the odd comment on Instagram complimenting me on my “content,” but that “content” is just my life, I don’t plan it, I don’t create it, it just is. When did our lives become fictional?! I’m all about real action, not figurative or hopeful. I’m about judging my relationships on how they are outside of an app, not what’s said inside of it. It’s too easy to lose ourselves in the virtual version of reality, where we can create how we’re seen. That’s the side of social media that I see, in terms of how it reflects back to me; it’s dark and foreboding, it’s void of meaning. And that is why I’ve been logging out. I want to enjoy it when I’m on there, not reminded of every flaw in my makeup. I rarely login in to Facebook now. I allow myself, twice a day, to look at Instagram (my main vice and source of all my first world anguish), and now I’ve been off-line, my desire to browse the app has diminished dramatically. I notice my boredom better than before; It doesn’t hold my attention. I caught myself scrolling half loaded pictures (bad wifi connection) this morning, and realised fifteen seconds in that I wasn’t actually looking at anything, I was swiping, endlessly, but the pictures were blurry and it was only the subconscious idea that something would appear that kept me going. So I put my phone down and finished my poop.

Has anyone else found themselves doing something similar? Has anyone else tried logging out? What kind of an effect did it have on you, on your mental health? What kind of an effect does your active participation on social media have, as a whole, on your mind? Do you feel less connected to the world, or more connected to those around you? Perhaps you have a better relationship with your phone than I do. *shrug*

I know I sound like a real doomsayer with my dark cloak (I’m not really wearing a cloak, but damn I think I’d like to) and and my seemingly pessimistic outlook. It’s not my intention to negate social media’s power to instigate positive change; just look at iWeigh, Help Refugees, Political Jules or Coppafeel. All good people using a Instagram to better spread their message of good health, equality and better body image across all platforms. I also believe the people who have really nailed social media are the heroes, the mums and dads of Facebook and Instagram, using Facebook to share with friends and family. That’s the whole point, and I personally think that we’re missing it as a younger generation. It’s so easy to lose ourselves in a business who’s main priority is traffic across all its apps. It doesn’t care what the traffic is, whether its bad or good, friend or foe, wizard or troll (I’ve been re-reading the Harry Potter books again), only that we’re there and we’re active. 

I reckon I really am an old woman at heart; so shoot me. I love my plants and painting, and I dream of living in some log cabin with an art studio, with a huge allotment, my main man and a couple of dergs, Bob Ross style. I love making music and getting on stage and performing, I love acting and I love media and I love galleries, I adore bookshops, beaches, forests. The whole, soppy whack. So what? I’m a romantic.

(That’s the only cool old lady gif I could find)^^^

I’m tired of stalling real conversations because either they or I have been sucked into apps, emails or jigsaw puzzles (it me). I want to live in this real world and create in this real world, but the discontent and conflict I feel is sometimes really, really irritating; I don’t want to use social media for my art, but it seems the only way you’re to be judged by labels and music makers. How much of a following do you have? How many likes do you pull in? How often do you post? It’s not about your art any more, it’s how good you are at selling it. I have enough trouble dealing with all the cogs turning in my brainbox without thinking about all this bullshit. And it goes beyond all that, it’s really irrelevant what career I choose, social media is addictive regardless of what we do.