*I Fucking. Love. Lists. *
Holy shit, do I ever love lists. My evernote is chock-full of to-do lists, to consume lists, to write lists, to listen lists, just a metric fuck-ton of lists.They keep my life in order, they take the stress off of me to have to remember every little thing they do, and they help externalize my thoughts in a totally priceless way. But every so often, I run into a little problem that I like to call a “Planeurysm”. This tends to happen when the tasks on my lists just don’t seem to be getting checked off as fast or in the way I want, and I start to careen down a path of increasing anxiety towards a full blown panic attack. Clearly at this point, the logic of lists has been kind of flipped on it’s head, because no matter how productive I am, it’s probably not worth it if my mental health starts to suffer and my “productivity” increases anxiety.
Today I found myself in that situation, it kind of starts in my chest and then gradually gains energy as it graduates itself up to my cranium and manifests in my skull like a cloud of little tiny angry bee’s made of fog. I had a number of kind of ambiguous tasks on my daily to-do list that I had tepidly started but had met with some frustration, and this was enough to start me on a path to a full blown planeurysm.
planeurysm waiting to happen
One of those tasks was planning to write a steemit post for today, but not really knowing what I was gonna write about. I began to sublimate this energy into frustration against myself and against why I am even writing to strangers on the internet (not that I believe steemit is a waste of time, but that’s where my mind started heading) . Then I remembered another totally essential tool that I have : Meditation. Thank the lord of fuck for that, because instead of allowing this planeurysm to develop into something resembling a full-blown panic attack, I decided to do a little 10-minute sitting meditation instead. During this meditation I had the realization, among other factors of internal observation and chilling out, that I could write about this very experience.
I think maybe sharing this experience could be helpful as a reference point for other people who experience anxiety created by giving themselves unrealistic goals or expectations, as It’s always amazing to re-discover that we are truly not alone in our struggles. Any stigma we feel for our mental struggles is totally unhelpful, and we should never feel that our mental struggles are a taboo topic. Another reason for writing this post would be that It is just great to externalize our thoughts in a way that makes them not seem so threatening, despite any potential audience this externalization may have. I also think it’s super important while putting productivity as a priority to remember to chill the fuck out once in a while, life’s short, then you die.
So! I’d love to hear if anyone else has ever been afflicted by a case of the “Planeurysms”.
