Anxiety – what a pain…
The fact that I am getting anxiety at this point in my life is absolutely stupid. It legitimately makes zero sense. All the logic in the world is telling me my brain is broken, but here I am. Now I have had plenty of anxiety in the past. Starting businesses and watching those businesses struggle in the beginning, making big life changes, and overall just fear of the unknown or a current dilemma.
I genuinely felt that after we sold our businesses, I would never feel anxiety again. That was a nice thought. I would be 32. I would have no pressure of running a business. I would be retired. I would just be living in our little beach town in Florida enjoying everything life had to offer. I was wrong… Nearly every day I feel some gut-wrenching force telling me something is wrong. Now we still have to finalize our sale of the company. It was structured and those results come out next week. We have invested a lot of our cash on hand which is simultaneously fun AND scary. We have a massive tax bill due here shortly and are embarking on some pretty big life changes, but to cause anxiety? I wouldn’t think so. It really makes no sense.
It does get me thinking though. If I can have anxiety in what is really a great scenario, I can only imagine how it must feel for some people that get anxiety really bad and their situations aren’t as cozy. Now, in all fairness it wasn’t too long ago Rhyan and I were broke and our marriage was struggling. I just don’t remember feeling this type of anxiety like I do now.
So I talk a lot about perspective and man… I have much more respect for people dealing with anxiety. In this moment I totally feel for them. More so than I ever have before. Probably because I thought before that I was working towards curing whatever it was making me anxious. I was fixing the problem and it would go away. Now there are no problems to fix, but the anxiety is still there. I feel for you if you feel this way. In the past I would have just said, “suck it up” and to some extent I still say that. However, I absolutely get the realness of it.
I’m still of the mindset you can let it cripple you or you can remember you still have to face life and push forward. You don’t just give up because your mind is messing with you. But I have a lot more sympathy for those with anxiety. On the plus side, it means we are not sociopaths, so that’s a good thing!
So what do I do to deal with it?
I like to try and ignore it the best I can. That’s probably not the best answer, but I’m pretty decent at compartmentalizing. I continue to live my life in a way that makes me happy and achieve our long-term goals and if at some point that path is making me unhappy, I’ll make a new decision and adjust my goals and live a different way.
I like to think of anxiety as the butterflies I would get before competing. In football or wrestling you always had those nerves before a match or game, but once you start it’s all gone. You’re working on the goal and you’re in the mess of it. So that’s how I’m treating this. Push forward. Continue the path I think is best and time will play this out. But I’m certainly not going to crawl into a ball in the corner of the room and rock myself back and forth until it’s over.
Some of this might be from towing that monster of a RV down from Connecticut. For anyone still reading we did make it back down with a 43 ft. long, 13.5 ft. high 5th wheel being towed by a full-crew cab long bed dually pickup truck. It is quite huge. We also apparently picked up the flu while in NYC (don’t worry it was pre-coronavirus) and as any mom and dad knows, once one person gets sick we all do not get sick at the same time. The flu is like Opera. four days for you, then four days for you, now four days for you. So our family as a whole got crippled for like 15 days. We ended up hunkering down at my mom’s house in Maryland for a few extra days. I’m sure she was thrilled to host the house of death. We then made our way down to a stop in Virginia and a stop in North Carolina. Carefully isolating ourselves from as many people as possible. We had a planned stop in South Carolina we decided to skip while heading toward it. A cold front had moved in with rain and the thought of setting up in the wet cold after recovering from illness was not thrilling. So, we trucked the extra five hours and got home. I’ll tell you what, home never felt so good after being away in hotels in new cites for two weeks, then getting sick and living in a tin can. It was extra glorious. We are back for a few more days and heading out to Alabama for an RV conference. Hopefully we meet some dads out there and get our podcast up and going!
Follow 100% DAD on Social:
Instagram: @100Dad
Facebook: @100Dad
TikTok: @100Dad
YouTube: 100% Dad
Twitter: @The100Dad