We'll see

I have to say this past weekend my mental health took a step backwards: anxiety levels were hugely elevated throughout, weighting me down with a sense of constant dread. The hot weather certainly didn’t help, piling on to the oppressive feelings, of being trapped with nowhere to escape. These COVID times are indeed tough for everyone, a massive psychological burden that affects you no matter how lucky you’ve been relatively to other that’s got it much worse.

You can’t expect to be completely okay through these decidedly abnormal times.

And I certainly expect to have bad days when it comes to my chronic anxiety issues. The journey of solid mental health is one of always a work-in-progress, and as such there will be days of improvement and calm, but mix in there are days of dread and despair. Only with consistent work can you hope to eke out slightly more good days than bad, and on those not so good days, the negative feelings are blunted, rather than being super acute.

But the rough moments are what we study and train for. It’s superbly easy to be calm and steady when things are going well and there’s nothing annoying you - you don’t need to study Zen Buddhism to handle those situations. Practicing the stoic arts comes into play when life isn’t particularly going your way, or your’e stuck in a intractable problem. You think you’ve got a lid things until life punches you right in the face; that’s when the training of going with the flow and remembering to focus on only what you can control is needed, that’s when you’ll be tested.

This past weekend was not the best, and for sure there will be many more days like it in the future. I just have to prepared for that eventuality, and utilize the coping mechanisms that’s being continuously cultivated with my philosophical studies.

I hope we all have a great week ahead.

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Spotted at a FedEx parking lot.

Fear of what other's think

One of my most crippling anxieties is worrying about other people’s perception of me. Perhaps this is why I never did jive well with social media, a world where the approval and praise of others is the common currency. I’d get really down on myself if someone didn’t reply to my inquiry, or had a negative reaction to one of my posts. To combat this, I’ve largely abandoned all forms of social media, save Twitter, because that is one service I simply cannot quit - far too engrossing.

The same anxiety manifests itself when I’m out in public: I’d want to be invisible, because any chance of drawing a reaction from someone - whatever it may be - has potential to be negative, or embarrassing. A strange paradox existed back when I had the Mazda MX-5 convertible: I seldom put the top down when driving because I felt completely exposed to the outside word. What if someone doesn’t approve of the music I’m listen to? Better turn down the volume.

And then I bought a 911. Yeah, that’ll help; Look at this asshole in a six-figure sports car.

Harboring such social affliction, I sure picked a weird subject to have as a hobby: photography. The task demands that I go out and be amongst others, yet I worry people will see me looking stupid, like crouching down in a yoga pose just to get the correct perspective on a shot. It’s no wonder I prefer to hike in mountains and take landscape photos: there’s no one around to see me. 

In recent years I’ve been much better in dealing with this anxiety, though being amongst large crowds at events still fills me with dread. But I know that fearing what other people think of me is absolute nonsense: no one notices me, nor would they care what I’m doing; I’m not special at all. People generally have a live-and-let-live attitude unless someone’s in danger of physical harm, so my anxiety is unfounded. I can easily go on with what I’m doing and no one will blink an eye.

Easiest said than done, obviously, but it has to be done nonetheless. Stoic philosophy dictates that one shouldn’t concern with what they cannot control; other’s perception of me is squarely in that category of incontrollable. I can’t change their thoughts, only my own, and I should be 100 percent focused on living my life as I desire it.

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I'm a silhouette, chasing rainbows on my own.

Stoicism

I’ve recently being reading about Stoicism, and one of the particular tenets that struck me deeply was the maxim of, and I’m paraphrasing here, “it’s already broken.” As in, think of your material possessions as if they are already broken and imperfect. That way, when those items do inevitably decay and get damaged, you wound’t be so fraught over it as people, me definitely included, tend to do. 

The tendency to overprotect and maintain perfection was especially acute back when I bought my Subaru Impreza WRX STI. I treated that thing better than myself: the front-end got an insanely expensive paint-protection film done, and the entire car got a permanent coat of synthetic wax (also not cheap). Every new nick and chip was scrutinized and agonized over, while fresh bird-droppings on the paint were dealt with swiftly to the point of obsession. A tiny scratch suddenly appears? Better break out that scrubbing compound!

In hindsight, such pursuit of perfection never bought me joy or comfort; if anything I was in a constant state of paranoia, And this extends to things beyond simply the car - think of all the money spent on protection-covers and sleeves that were purchased for my precious consumer electronic devices (though I’ll never understand why people put glass covers on their smartphone that already comes with scratch-proof glass).

 I’ve let the proverbial things to own me, instead of the other way around. For sure it’s been a constant struggle to change that paradigm, but slowly I think I endeavor to rid myself of obsessive over keeping things perfect (though not necessarily to the point of neglect). Imaging items as already broken makes an excellent affirmation.