I have an anxiety disorder. A lot of us do. That's not what I'm talking about, but this applies to that too. Everyone experiences anxiety, everyone loses sleep because they're afraid, and everyone has hours they just can't stay in one place because their mind is racing about things that they're afraid of which they have to do. It's part of the human experience, and not a bad one. The benefit of anxiety is that it encourages foresight through contemplation of events before engaging in them. The hell of it is when that contemplation is a nightmarish cycle of daydream after daydream, picturing negative outcomes one after the other in a maddening torrent.
But it doesn't need to be this way. It probably is for you, though, because you're reading this. So what I want to say is that the philosophers are wrong. Thinking is not better than action. Life is not meant to be experienced through the cranium, but with all parts, simultaneously. Your asshole is as much a part of you as your eyes, brain, and hands. You don't take care of all of those - all of yourself - via reading, thinking, or meeting your abstract responsibilities that the Dostoevskyesque calendar imposed upon us demands. No:
you take care of yourself by living.
This isn't to disparage the value of reading or thought. Of course these things are valid in living, but it's to promote the option of dealing with it rather than thinking about it. I've always had a phobia of needles. Too many times I couldn't sleep the night before going into the doctor because I was so terrified of them, and it was never about the pain. Pain is something I have a good tolerance for. No, it was the vivid picture of it occuring that I would see over and over, of something almost microscopic piercing my skin and then entering my vein. That's what got me. It wasn't the pain, the doctor, or the building. Now I'm much better at dealing with them, and that's because I just don't think about it before hand. Weed helped with it because initially I couldn't force myself to forget the facts, like when the appointments were, but the point is that I kept it out of mind. Before I knew it I was in the chair, getting a shot, iv, or my blood drawn, and I was fine. Why? Because I wasn't thinking about it. I wasn't picturing it. It was just happening, and it wasn't that bad.
Life isn't easy, so I'm not going to pretend you can just immediately apply this advice. I'm not trying to talk about a cure for anxiety or some such nonsense, but simply telling you to consider living instead of thinking. Do instead of contemplate. Do not imagine what will come, engage with what's in front of you. That is easier said than done, but it can be done. Trust me. It took years, but I got there.
