An Overthinker’s Paradise
And just like that, it’s dark at 8pm. The kids are back to school and overthinking begins to seep back in. Then overthinking the overthinking sets off thankless, terminal rumination. Other days all of these seasonal changeovers conjure the anticipation of dark nights in the cave. On a bad day, I’ll find a way to spin that into guilt about the privilege of even having a cave, and here is a great illustration of living with a brain like mine.
The recovery from the anxiety of the last few years, this swollen mid-life crisis, is a long one and requires constant work, but not a constant spotlight. Anxiety mutates under the spotlight. The work must be about ensuring good habits are practised – socialising, maintaining meaningful relationships, creating, letting go, acknowledging where control ends, and switching off, playing, and so on. I struggle most when I let such foundations crumble, allowing my natural disorganisation to take over, giving too much time to creating and not enough to ensuring things are in their right place.
Each autumn I try to put together a podcast episode to help people through the dark nights, when it can be hard to hold onto optimism. There’s another good habit: cause. The purpose I feel in my creativity, in contributing my energy and knowledge to helping others elevate creativity on an individual and collective level, is important to me. Humans take a lot from the earth, from each other, in upholding this way of life we’ve built, and I’m far too sensitive to not put something back in. That would only bring on more of those bad nights and all kinds of deathbed anguish.
How do you feel about your creativity? I wonder about that and have many chance chats about it, even with those who don’t consider themselves in anatomical possession of a creative bone. Is it serving you? Is it giving you a voice in the world, an outlet for the insane quantities of information we’re expected to process and hold these days? Or is it buried under tasks that pay the bills, that you might even enjoy, but take you away from your inner artist, leaving you frustrated, questioning whether it’s even for you anymore?
During the summer, I get so into the kids being off school, the silly fun, the trips and the idle play, that it’s incredibly hard to find the motivation to work in the pockets in between the childcare. I never thought I’d encounter that. Back in 2008, when I took the plunge, 16-hour days weren’t uncommon because this was everything to me, my entire identity and reason for getting out of bed in the morning. 18-years in, it still represents a significant chunk of my being, but I’ve habituated to the fact this is my job. I’ve sustained a creative industry career for 18-years, which doesn’t strip away gratitude; it doesn’t make me complacent either, but it feels more like work than it used to. So, it takes bravery and curiosity to access the wonder it used to bring. I have to initiate that, because as grateful and happy as I am for the client work, I’m divided in my causes. I have two small humans and a small dog to care for, and as the years go by, their worlds merge with mine. This plays a part in the rising anxiety that gets me because my scratch disks are full a lot of the time. And while I’ve never missed a deadline and actively enjoy the vast majority of my work, it’s the emotional creativity that clears the disk space, speeds up the operating system and grants me the capacity to think, to dream and exercise the silliness that is so fundamental to my happiness and ability to emotionally regulate.
This time of year is a return to full-time hours. The UK revenge-based weather system will ensure the drought panic of the summer is traded in for months of rain in a day or two as I sit in the garden, alone, asking myself big questions I can’t possibly start to answer, forgetting to catch up on my accounts or go out for a drink. So, how about we nudge each other this autumn and winter? An email here and there, or a message if we’re in direct contact? How did you get on with that thing you were on about? Have you heard from so-and-so? Did you find out what consciousness is yet? Let’s remember that the highlight reels are often digital white lies or distractions from the realities we share in an industry riddled with Olympian overthinkers.