Thursday, August 29, 2013

I Wasted at Least 3 Hours Today Looking for Problems that Didn't Exist

Let's see.  I start off the day waking up at 6:30 am feeling pretty good about myself.  Feeling good that I had the discipline to actually stand up and stay up at this time instead of crawling back into bed to try and sleep and not face the day.  I zip through my daily work responsibilities and am feeling close to home free at around 11:30 knowing that a potential 1pm finish is around the corner.   I even hear the good news that I'll be getting a nice fat five figure check in the mail to boot.  And what happens?  All of it.  Every single last bit of good feeling I have goes down the drain because of one email.  One email that's unbelievably minor in the grand scheme of things.  In fact it's like a joke how minor the email was.



It was a writer who works for me telling me that a few pages on one of our websites were showing 404 not found errors.   Then when you refresh said pages they appear as normal.   So the site wasn't down.  The most important content on the site was still appearing.  All the other sites were functioning perfectly fine. Nothing but these few pages were screwing up.   But what did I do?  Emailed, searched, searched, emailed, checked, called, checked, emailed, searched, emailed.   Then I did some work for about 10 minutes.  Then went back to checking, work, checking, searching, emailing, checking email, looking on Facebook to see people were online to make sure they were alive.  Yes I was even doing that as I occasionally (normally) do.   

It doesn't take much to trigger my anxiety and once it's triggered it's on.  That's the amazing thing about anxious people.  It's the fake stuff they can't handle.  It's the projections they can't live with.  Someone dies?  I'm a pro.  I can be there for my wife, family and be the strong husband I'm supposed to be.  We lose the house?  We'll make it work.  It'll be OK.   I'm actually quite good at real life.  I'm horrible at fake life.  Fake life is my projected life and it's that life that rears itself more often than I'd care to accept.

Today it pretty much kicked my ass.  The positive I can take out of it is that I did in fact go to the gym.  I did get to play with my son and wife today.  I did manage to eat a tad more than yesterday and I plan on eating a nice amount of food once this post is published.   And I suppose I hate myself a little less right now than I did a few hours ago when I was relentlessly looking for more problems to superficially find their way into my life.  

It's what I said before a few days ago.  There's really no way out of anything but through it.  That's the only way.  It's making yourself do the things you know are right despite how much your mind resists it.  It's the hardest thing to do.   The issue with the anxiety afflicted is that most people don't treat it like a disease or a disorder.  They think something is wrong with them.  I hope harder than anything that I'll have the discipline to know when I'm being absurd and no matter how hard it is to break free of the obsessive thinking I engage in, that I actually have the power to put it off to the side (it'll never disappear, that much I've accepted) and maybe, just maybe it won't be as prevalent for the time being.  Hell if an alcoholic knows not to drink alcohol then shouldn't I know that when my thoughts and actions become obsessive I need to engage in focusing on something else?  Easier said than done.

It's now 7:23PM.   Three hours wasted isn't horrible all things considered.   I've gone over a week of wasted time in certain stints.   And I've gone days without eating, so I guess today's a "victory?"  Keep on keepin' on.  La dee da, la dee da.

No comments:

Post a Comment