a little sparrow that flies so high

[alchimie]

When oh when shall I learn that when I am anxious about a thing, the best course is simply to plow ahead and Do The Thing? I feel like I rediscover this every few days, which is rather ridiculous. The latest example is much anxiety about the forthcoming camping trip (I am not a camping person but I am a Girl Scout leader, so camping I will go) and the various to-do lists and the nagging sense that I have forgotten something critical which I am responsible for -- but today I met with the three other adults involved and all is well; I have not forgotten anything and they like what I am doing for the project I am in charge of and the remaining tasks on my list are easily in my capabilities. And yet all the sleepless early mornings, all the gnawing anxiety, all the stress! If only I could channel the spinning of my hamster wheel of worries into powering a small town! (Grandiose, that. My own home?)

But that is part of why I am trying to write here honestly; not a curated version of my life for future generations to admire, not only the parts which I hope others might like to read (books and music and art and so forth, and if the others think I am so very intelligent and lovely that is a bonus), but the everyday details and how I am truly feeling about them, even when my feelings are that I am anxious for the 87,461th time in the last 72 hours about my ability to fulfill my committments. Perhaps if I write it here, truly, then it will begin to click into my brain that I really am this reasonably competent adult person, and that the way to not spin the hamster wheel is to dive into whatever it is that is worrying me, rather than avoiding it until the last possible second.

"When the resistance is gone, so are the demons," Pema Chödrön writes in Start Where You Are, which I have been reading a page or two at a time over the last six months. I find it to be true, when I allow it to be, and I think this about avoidance is the same, a way to resist rather than simply dealing with what is.

Now I should go begin putting smol son to bed; both children were back at school today and had remarkably good days but are tired out from the effort of socialising and following directions and placing large numbers upon number lines and practising writing last names and so forth. As well they might be, so I will hope for them to both have solid sleep to prepare for another day of it tomorrow.

Comments

[graydon]

Anxiety is generally of the self, not the world. What layer of the self -- anxiety in the substrate or the habits or the expectations of being free from error -- is still a question.

I have found it useful to recognize that everything is a failure (just like good and bad are purely questions of viewpoint) and get on with failing with some measurable degree of material utility. (Easier to do professionally than personally, but presumably practice matters here, too.)

[alchimie]

I think practise does matter, quite a bit. I try not to see things in terms of necessary success, but it is pernicious; I tell my children all the time that it is necessary to make mistakes in order to learn new skills but I nonetheless wish to be a paragon of perfection for the larger group of children I have volunteered to run programs for -- even though I believe that modelling my ability to fail and continue working is more valuable to them than any sort of perfection would be.

The place I think that I really trip myself up is wanting the approval of these random adults whom I intersect with; aside from human nature there is no real reason for it, and it gets in the way of the failing with some measurable degree of material utility (a very pleasing phrase, that one).

[graydon]

I'm glad you find the phrase pleasing!

Social approval matters; we're a band-forming primate, and insufficient social approval is how one gets left for the leopard. A good metric for "am I at risk of being designated leopard chow?" would be a wonderful thing to have.