The essence of being ‘off’ is not something I’ve been too experienced with. I’ve worked since I was 13 years old, and probably even earlier than that I was planning to work and get out there. I am a worker bee at heart.
What being off has taught me is that the world doesn’t stop spinning just because I took time off. People still go on with their lives and business still gets done. The view from the porch becomes just that much sweeter when my To Do List isn’t knocking around in my head.
But what has surprised me more than anything is that the stress and anxiety, although greatly diminished for sure, doesn’t actually go away for me. I have a base level of stress and anxiety that appears to be chronic. Although I can’t say I’m happy about this, I’m enlightened in a way that in knowing this, I can’t attribute all of the stress and anxiety I feel to what is going on at any given moment, I have to attribute much of what I feel to me and my natural physicality.
And that’s ok. As long as I know about it.
As I start to build up my working life again, I go into it with this knowledge of this base stress, and that it’s me. My dad suffered from tremendous anxiety and his entire life he blamed everything around him (including his own failures which only he could see) on this chronic feeling inside himself. If I can improve upon that just a little bit, it will be to own my own anxiety, and learn how to drive it, because the only thing that is responsible for it is me, my view of the world and how I respond to it.
T.S. Eliot said ‘Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.’ If this is so, than I wouldn’t wish it away, even on the gloomiest of days.
Wishing you a week of valuable insights.