Take it easy

It’s been said that depression is dwelling on the past, and anxiety is focusing on the future. To be perfectly content, you must be attentive to right now.

I guess my anxiety lately then is focusing too much on what’s coming next, even though I am thoroughly enjoying nexts that are coming up. Life is going great. I like the work that pays me well, and my hobbies and whatnot is intensely fulfilling. But that doesn’t obviate the fact there is a list of things to do, every day. Things need to get done, no matter that I enjoy doing them.

And there lies the problem. I would wake up and get anxious about the to-do list. You know how back in the schooling days, we would get home from school and eagerly tackle our pile of homework. Because we know that soon as we finish, we can go do the fun stuff, like playing video games. I’ve been treating my daily to-do list kind of like that: to get them done as quickly as possible so I can relax.

But that’s the thing: I can’t relax. There is no leisure to be found when knowing that the very next day - after a wonderful night of sleep - I have to do it all over again. So I end up chasing this phantom that never arrives. Sure, I am getting things done - but to what end? If all of this is what I want to do, why can’t I seem to achieve this promised peace of mind?

What I need to avoid is speed-running through life. The only thing waiting at the end, is death. I have to slow all the way down. Don’t walk so fast to get to work. Take my time and allow in the magic of the walk itself.

That’s what I am working on these days: slowing the F down.

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Schooling days.

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.

The waiting game is hard

Continuing with the story from yesterday, I had to order a small part to fix up the Porsche. Problem is, the particular piece of plastic is a special order item, which in combination with the Presidents Day holiday yesterday means I will have to wait a relatively long time the part to arrive at my doorstep (and hopefully not stolen). The extended wait is long and agonizing because I want nothing more than to repair the 911 as quickly as possible, however cosmetic and superficial the damage may be (thank god for that).

For better and worse, that’s just how my mind functions: any task worth doing, I’d like to get it done swiftly. I can remember back in my teens of forgoing meals and sleep on numerous occasions because the home-built PC was malfunctioning and I simply could not mentally bare doing anything else until the fix is finished. No surprised then I moved away from PCs later on in life and migrated over to Apple’s Macintosh. With Apple, at least I can go to sleep, knowing there’s nothing I can do about my broken Mac until my appointment at the Apple Store.

Not to say the waiting game isn’t anxiety-filled: the mind starts going through worse-case scenarios when the outcome of a job is unknown. It’s why I try to speed up the process as much as I can, to silence those voices in my head (Randy Orton theme song plays). Indeed, I could have paid for expedited shipping for the Porsche part, but the need to alleviate my anxiety was outmatched by my spending sensibilities. Instead, I’ll deal with the ambiguity that comes with the wait, difficult as it sometimes can be.

So I preoccupy myself with other tasks, which probably isn’t the best thing to do because the underlying problem is still there, but at some point you have to keep moving forward. Unlike Amazon Prime one-day shipping, life doesn’t acquiesce to your just-in-time wants quite so easily. Processes takes time; and even though I crave the calm that comes after a task is done, there will be others to come, and the anxiety renews again. I have to learn to be calm while things are in-flux, which as always, is a work in progress.

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Family games.

Dance to the heartbeat

I think I am now able to pinpoint exactly when my anxiety levels are elevated.

It’s in the frequency of heartbeat, and I’ve train myself to feel for it when my heart-rate gets elevated when it really shouldn’t be. The body is pumping additional blood in preparation for potential calamity, even though I’m merely in the simple act of getting ready to leave the house. That’s true anxiety, and it’s a problem I’m working on lately.

The increased heart-rate due to anxiety creates many stress hormones, causing the body to constantly be in a fight-or-flight mode, unable to relax. There’s lots of triggers, though for me it’s primarily the habit of thinking ahead into the future and dreading the negative scenarios or possibilities. Funny thing is, most of the time the bad outcomes I’ve created in my head never come to pass, so I suffer the consequences from being anxious without any benefit whatsoever. I’ve steeled myself for nothing.

Being ‘in the moment’ is tough, and it’s a constant practice. At least now I know how to spot when I am overly anxious: an elevated heart-rate for no tangible reason.

How do you control something as involuntary as the heart? Via something you can control: breathing. Whenever I feel a brash of anxiety hitting me, I go into deep breathing mode: going super slowly with both inhale and exhale. I’d also try to clear my mind and concentrate on the breathing alone. That will usually do the trick to get me back to base-level, though sometimes it doesn’t work, and the anxiety will continue on unabated.

It’s definitely a process.

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All that glass and none of the magic.

Anxiety 2019

Lately I’ve come to realize I’ve been battling a new sort of anxiety for the better part of this year. I can’t exactly put a definitive word to it; the best I can describe it is a nagging sense of insecurity about the status quo. Perhaps it’s easier to give an example.

We’re suppose to relax on weekends, right? Those of us in a fortunate enough position to have a regular weekday job get to chill on Saturdays and Sundays after a hard week’s work. Problem for me is, I can’t seem to fully enjoy my weekends. When I’m out doing super fun stuff like driving the GT3 around, I’d often times have a sense of guilt about it: I am having too much leisure; this is too bloody nice of a car; stop having so much fun and free time, because there’s plenty of work to do to preserving this whole thing.

Things are going along far too nicely; exactly when is the music going to stop?

No wonder that even on a holiday like Labor Day, I can’t seem shutdown my operating system and be in a state of not doing.

Instead of fully relaxing, I’d have anxiety about the work week ahead, and stressing about am I doing my best to warrant a long future with the company. Irrational thoughts, too, like am I just one giant imposter? I don’t really deserve to be paid for the work that I am doing; surely the guillotine will drop any minute now! It became a never-ending rat-race, and downtimes at work would trigger my anxiety, because I immediately worry about not doing enough.

Keep in mind that in reality, from the outside looking in, things are going well.

There’s insecurity about other stuff, too, like the housing. Even though it’s highly unlikely we’d be kicked out of our current below-market rate renting situation, I’d have anxiety about that, and would get deep down into the negative rabbit hole of running worst case scenarios in my head and how everything will change. Again, it’s mostly irrational thoughts, but the stress from that is real, and only now that I’ve snapped out of it do I see it clearly.

One of the four noble truths in Buddhism is that life is suffering, but it isn’t the type of suffering in what we tend to associate the word with, but rather it’s the suffering from wanting to hold onto things, and preserving what we have. Even when your life is measurably great, you will suffer greatly if you become attached to the status quo, desperate to hold on, and constantly scared it’ll all be taken away.

I think that’s been exactly my issue, and I’m glad that certain events in the past months have rescued me out.

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Spare a thought for the groom-to-be decked out in full tuxedo in Japan’s hot and humid summer weather.

No rest for the wicked?

It was Labor Day this past weekend, and after a hectic week at work, in which it was the first week of the Fall semester, the respite of a three-day weekend came at precisely the right time. I had plans to do my normal two-day weekend routine on Saturday and Sunday, and then come Monday, the goal was to do absolutely nothing, and just chill.

Well, Monday rolled around, and along with it the difficulty: I actually couldn’t make myself to not do anything! That morning, by the time the second consecutive Youtube video rolled around, I already had pangs of regret in wasting time and not being productive. On Labor Day, the day where I am suppose to relax and be lazy - and super fortunate to be in a position to do so, I have trouble in execution. What happened to the guy who could simply binge-watch a string of television seasons, like any other normal person?

He’s no longer here.

After watching the second video, I was too uncomfortable with the notion that I’m going to be doing that for the rest of the day. So, even though it’s technically a holiday, I returned to my daily routine, albeit in less of a time crunch since I didn’t have work: study Korean for an hour, read a book for an hour, and write a piece for this very website. It wasn’t until I’ve finished all three items that I felt at ease with watching car-related stuff on Youtube for the rest of the day.

The inability to just chill: is it a bad thing? Is there some latent anxiety or depression that I’m using constant productivity to avoid confronting? I really don’t know. The clock never stops on the action long enough for me to invade my own mind and find out the answer; I’d get antsy and pick up the book again, or write some more; or I still have many great podcasts to listen to, so let’s jump back to that queue.

These days I have a great desire for peace and quiet, but ironically, granting that silence for my own mind is a grace I can’t seem to give myself. I’m far too eager for what’s next, which is why even on Labor Day I’m unable to fully commit to a day of doing nothing.

I’m sure there’s some positives to that, too; hashtag hustle. That’s the ‘yin’ and the ‘yang’.

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This is exactly how I pictured Japan car culture looks like.