Month: July 2022

When the Anxiety Takes Over

| Ben

My anxiousness has crept up on me again and it’s been a bit of a nuisance. For anybody who doesn’t experience ongoing anxiety, consider yourself lucky.

When I explain it to people, I explain it like this: You know that first day worry and anxiousness you have on the first day of working in a new place? That’s what I experience every day that I go to work. I am anxious about many things, more than half will probably not happen. It can get debilitating. It sometimes makes me physically sick. I have missed a lot of work because it’s so easy to work myself up into a frenzy. I love my work 90% of the time. I love what I do, but that fear of not doing a good job lingers.

I have the same feeling sometimes in public. It’s constant worrying. For example, did I shave my head right? Does it have stripes on the back of my head that I missed? Is it red? Is it razor burnt? Everybody sees it and they’re judging me for being sloppy and unkempt. In reality, people don’t scrutinize that much, but my brain doesn’t accept that all the time.

Today I was at the gym and was worried about everybody looking at me. Am I doing things right? Do they notice that I shake a lot? In reality, no one really cares. My brain just didn’t accept that.

It has been really bad in the past without it being controlled. I control it a bit with medication, but I use cognitive behaviour therapy as well to help myself. Lately it’s just been a bit sloppy. I don’t know why and it kind of bothers me a bit.

A lot of what I DON’T do is because this anxiety takes over. I could be so much more productive and happy without it. Some days I don’t let it bother me. It’s just hard to do lately. I don’t release my projects to the public because of it.

My husband is my mental health expert. It’s hard sometimes because he’s able to diffuse some of my negative thinking patterns and make me realise that I am overthinking things. It has been up to me to get by since I moved.

While out today after the first workout I’ve had in a very long time, I thought about my life in general and need to make some changes. I want to unleash my full potential. I’ll get there, but it will take time. But you know something? I think that’s totally acceptable to me.

Tired…

| Ben

So the podcast episode posting didn’t really happen this month. I don’t even know if the one I recorded in the car will even see the light of day yet. That’s okay. I’ve been pretty slack with updating that or anything here, so hopefully you’ll forgive me.

How are things going for me? Eh, they’ve been kind of crappy. I have had a serious lack of energy lately so I haven’t really done anything outside work and that’s incredibly sad.

Husband’s off in India and I’m kind of sitting around waiting for him to come back already. He just left last weekend and let’s not forget that I am living more or less by myself. I wanted to go to India, but I’ve got too much happening around me at the moment. Too many commitments. That’s not very fun.

I’m going to try to record very soon, remembering that I might be repeating myself a little bit. That’s okay, right?

I’m just perpetually sick and tired and I wish that I could just feel better at some point.

July Brings New Podcast Episodes

| Ben

UPDATE: Yeah, that didn’t happen. This podcast episode will probably be scrapped. I haven’t had the time and/or energy to edit it and all that. I’m going to try to get one out (re-recorded or not) this month.

I’ve started recording podcast episodes again. Still, I am not committing to a set schedule, but I thought that I would record while I drive from place to place. I feel as if this makes the time pass a little faster and helps me formulate and process the thoughts I have in my head. I recorded in mid-June and thought I would post the whole thing at once, but my recording ended up being over 1.5 hours, so I will slice it into two parts.

For those with an account, you can listen about 3-5 days early. I had planned to upload the first on 1 July, but that will be moved to next week due to some unexpected health issues. They’ll need a bit of editing.

To see general information about these new episodes, go to https://cnoi.se/ or https://www.complicatednoise.com/ and make your way to the podcast section.

I am going to try to post at least a monthly podcast episode. We’ll see.