Author: brianjohnson

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Why I Get Anxious when I’m Alone

So this blog premise was marked down a while back – I suspect earlier this year. I don’t even feel like it’s that relevant anymore, but I thought it would be interesting to write about it in hindsight.

As established elsewhere, I have since determined that I’ve been depressed much of the time over the last handful of years. I’ve also determined that the primary cause of this depression was a deep-seated insecurity and feeling of inadequacy.

Increasingly, this had manifested as a sinking feeling in my stomach along with anxiety and other depressive symptoms.

I think it’s very common for these types of insecurities to be dealt with by simply repressing them. The more successfully you can repress them, the better you feel. Its temporary impact is lessened and you can more readily enjoy whatever you’re doing.

Clearly, this is not permanently sustainable and eventually results in things like full-blown depression and anhedonia.

In my case I think that when I was alone I was forced to confront it. I wasn’t able to repress it any longer and the feelings came up and manifested as anxiety, among other things.

This seems pretty obvious to me now. It definitely wasn’t then. It’s actually pretty amazing how effective it has been for me to just methodically work through all these things on my own. With the insights I’ve made, I feel like most of my behavior and feelings in the past can be easily explained.

I’m also excited to realize that most of this insecurity has pretty much gone away. I rarely feel like I used to.

It’s as if simply shining a light on the problem made it go away. It used to thrive in the shadows but now that I’m aware of it and can rationally determine that it doesn’t even make sense, it’s a lot easier to make it go away.

So I really just wanted to address this particular blog prompt because I think it’s just quite interesting how things have changed in a relatively short amount of time. It’s nice to feel like progress has been made.

It’s also just fun to realize that something that seemed super mysterious and perplexing just a few short months ago is now so obvious to me.

 

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I Think I Need to Eliminate the Consumption of All Short-Form Content

Over the last few years, I’ve tried optimizing a number of things. I’ve identified tons of things that are “bad” and done everything I can to maximize productivity, happiness, and enjoyment.

I’ve had mixed results, and have often been left with things that just don’t quite line up with my understanding of how everything should work.

I’ve now come to the conclusion that short-form content of just about any kind is absolutely destroying my motivation, my energy, my focus, and even my enjoyment of, well, literally everything else.

I’m not going to claim to fully understand the interaction of dopamine and other neurotransmitters here. But I believe that whether you’re binge-watching YouTube videos, scrolling through any social media feed, or even clicking through news headlines, you are using up something that is difficult to replace.

After I’ve done any of that, I feel unmotivated, and it takes a ton of work to get anything done. I also seem to have a spike in anhedonia and don’t appreciate or enjoy most things all that much.

I like to think that I’ve pretty much avoided all of these things and shouldn’t be suffering from them. But YouTube has really been the last holdout.

Since I got rid of YouTube shorts, I figured that I could just watch the “longer” videos and I’d be fine.

But I find myself jonesing for more videos. And then it becomes hard to just sit and do nothing without constantly reaching for my phone to watch more. And by then it’s too late.

The last few days, I’ve avoided even watching YouTube, and I think I’m starting to feel a lot better. I’m feeling more motivated and starting to enjoy things more.

Granted, I just got back home to Minnesota and there are lots of additional factors. But I really think this one contributes greatly.

I’m going to continue strictly avoiding all short-form content and might even start avoiding really any shows or movies for a while (other than when I’m with a friend) just to see how I feel. I think it might make a huge difference.

If it goes well, I’ll implement these things long-term. I’m pretty hopeful it will.

And even if it doesn’t: what will I have lost? Nothing. Even if these things didn’t have longer-term impacts, I feel that they have negative value just in wasting your time.

I do not need more entertainment.

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The Missing Factor: Social Routine

I’m realizing more and more how incredibly important social routine is. More than just being social, I mean having some kind of routine where you will predictably see and interact with others.

I’ve historically always eschewed all forms of routine in my life, including social routine. I’ve always liked the idea that anything could happen at any time and that I was free to take advantage of any opportunities that came up.

But I’m starting to see the value of having a kind of routine. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and don’t need or want limitless possibility every single day, but I think that it’s just great to have something to look forward to on a regular basis.

Having a kind of routine makes you feel stable and secure. You know what’s coming. You experienced it recently, and it was great, and now you will be experiencing it again. So you get excited.

I’m sure I’ve belittled the nature of most people to seek comfort, safety, and stability above all else, but there is certainly value in these things.

And like with all things, I think the key is balance.

With a strong foundation below you, you are more stable and that can open you up to more options. So in a sense, perhaps having the right balance of these things actually opens you up to maximum opportunity.

I don’t need or want to have recurring plans for every day of the week. But having a couple throughout the week can be great!

When I’m home, I constantly look forward to the next time we go out and play disc golf. While it isn’t strictly on the same days of the week, it is fairly regularly and tends to fall on similar days, and offers enough rigidity to keep me excited and motivated.

I also generally see most of my friends regularly enough that it feels like routine.

And of course in the fall, we have our kickball league, which offers the truest and most rigid routine I have at any point, and it’s quite enjoyable.

Here in Spain, I’ve failed to secure any kind of social routine whatsoever, and I think that has cost me.

I recently had the idea to look up casual volleyball leagues. Right at the very end of my 3-month stay.

The idea of having something on the calendar and playing volleyball once or twice per week is excellent. I would have loved to have done that. Plus I would have met people quickly and probably been invited to do other activities as well.

Alas, I did not do that. I didn’t join anything or make myself part of any kind of group.

Those things would have been great.

I’m thinking now that I should join some kind of group, club, or activity immediately when I travel to a new place. I think that kind of social routine is exactly what I would need to feel at-home and quickly amplify my social circle.

It’s too late for this trip, but I’m looking forward to trying it out the next time.

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I’ve Internalized such a Radical Sense of Personal Responsibility that I See Everything as My Fault

I’ve always been attracted to schools of thought that say you should consider everything in your control and take responsibility for everything around you because, in the end, you can only truly control yourself. So if you want different results, you need to change yourself.

And it’s an enticing message and also seems totally reasonable.

I do want to note that I think “personal responsibility” as a personal strategy can be helpful (to the extent I’m going to outline), but “personal responsibility” as public policy is disastrous at best and deeply malicious at worst. I think it’s basically just used to justify the status quo, blame the less fortunate for their problems, and codify a tiered society while freeing the ruling class from any semblance of guilt (or – ironically – responsibility).

With that out of the way, I want to highlight the primary ways in which using “personal responsibility” as a personal strategy is limited or can be actively harmful:

  1. Many things are completely out of your control and if you believe otherwise you will waste your time
  2. You’ll worry about the outcome of everything around you, feeling that those outcomes are a reflection of your own efforts and abilities
  3. You’ll blame yourself and feel a tremendous sense of guilt every time something goes wrong
  4. You might feel inadequate with your abilities or accomplishments because you are downplaying or outright denying the importance of external advantages others might have had (wealthy parents, connections, etc.)

This is honestly something I never really considered before today. While I knew there were potential pitfalls to blindly believing in “personal responsibility,” I guess I never really considered how such an ideology was hurting me.

And now I have, and I’m realizing that it’s been harmful in quite a few ways.

I think it has made me a lot more anxious. Historically I’ve always considered myself an easy-going, go-with-the-flow type of person, but I’ve felt my anxiety creeping up over the years and I think this is partly to blame.

I feel responsible for everything bad that happens around me. I always think of things I should have done to prevent it, and I treat the possibility of future bad things like a puzzle to be solved. If I just work hard enough or do things perfectly, I can avoid it.

Some of the happiest people I know are the types to not take responsibility for much of anything. They see most problems as someone else’s fault, and so aren’t bothered by them.

And that’s probably what is the most harmful to me: it’s the feeling that these bad things happen because of my own inadequacies. It’s my fault they happened, and I should have been better.

Since obviously it’s impossible to prevent bad things from happening, and many of these things are completely out of your control, this leads to a rather pointless and constant barrage against your self-esteem.

And if our only goal was productivity, you could make the case that with a crippled self-esteem, you’re going to be way less capable and get much less done in the end, defeating the purpose of “personal responsibility”.

Productivity is, of course, not our only goal. And so the damage to self-esteem matters far more than just how it affects productivity.

I think that this mindset has also hurt me in that it’s hard for me to let go of things. For every failed project, relationship, goal, or performance, I can’t help but analyze what I did wrong and ultimately blame myself.

Which: of course! That’s the whole idea.

But you can’t spend all your time thinking about your failures. In reality, they may not even be your failures. Sometimes things just happen. Some things weren’t meant to be.

While looking at everything like it’s your fault may provide useful insight so you can improve in the future, it also might not.

And more importantly: it may severely cripple your own self-image to the point where you no longer see yourself as talented or capable at all. And besides making you unhappy, it may also ruin your future chances at success.

I can’t help but still keep thinking this way, but I think it’s important to seek balance. I need to learn when to dig for insight in failures, and when to simply accept them and move on. Some failures have no lessons.

I’ve spoken before about how I think we need to be careful about the lessons we learn from our failures, but I’m just now starting to realize that one of the reasons I prefer to learn lessons from successes is because it’s just a lot better for your self-esteem. And if we want to approach things from a pragmatic perspective, we need to also consider these things because they affect future performance, too.

I’m not saying that focusing on “personal responsibility” doesn’t have benefits. What I’m saying is that it absolutely has limits. It doesn’t apply to every situation.

If, in a given situation, it’s a useful paradigm: use it! But if it doesn’t serve you then you shouldn’t.

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It’s Very Important for me to Feel Progression in My Life

This almost feels like maybe I’ve already written this same blog post before, but hopefully I didn’t.

I had the thought recently that I need to always feel like I’m progressing in something. I don’t necessarily need to be progressing in everything, but at in at least 1 or 2 areas, I do.

Self-improvement is important to me, and if you look at how I spend my time, most of my activities involve some kind of improvement. Whether it’s studying a language, going to the gym, or learning/practicing other things, I’m always trying to improve.

When I spend a lot of time on something and I don’t feel like I’m progressing, I get frustrated. It has happened time and time again with weight training, it has happened with language-learning, and it also happened – notably – last year with disc golf.

I’m not sure exactly why it is so important to me. I also don’t know whether it’s what I should truly be focusing on. Maybe I’m focusing a bit too much on the outputs rather than the inputs. If I put time in and focus on ways that will actually make me better, the outputs will come.

If I focus too much on just the results, I may get frustrated and sacrifice the quality of my training. I may even avoid the thing altogether, which obviously won’t yield results.

I don’t think it is bad to focus on progression and I’m sure I’ll always do that. But I do think it’s important to take a step back and focus more long-term on things, and also consider the context of everything. If I’m struggling overall with mental health or external factors, it will affect my progression elsewhere.

I shouldn’t get frustrated with myself for not progressing in one area when I have serious problems elsewhere.

Regardless, I think that it is simply important to acknowledge that it is, in fact, important to me to always be progressing, and make sure I’m focusing my time and energy effectively to ensure that I can do that.

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I Always Seem to Believe that there is One Thing that is Holding me Back

If you were to read through my blog posts back-to-back, you’d probably come across a general theme.

I always seem to believe that I’d be performing better, if only I fixed this one thing.

That thing, of course, changes. It might be drinking, it might be my sleeping habits, it might be my relationship, the way my business is set up, nutrition, fitness, or other self-imposed limitations.

But I always seem to believe that my true potential – not just for accomplishment but for performance – has never actually been realized.

Almost all of the things mentioned do impact my performance. And I believe I am much better for having tried to optimize all of them.

But at the end of the day… I hate to say it, but I think this is kind of it. I’m never going to be a bottomless well of energy and I’m never going to magically start performing way better than I did before.

I think at this point I basically need to accept that, and take pragmatic steps forward.

All the building blocks are there. I’ve established time and again the importance of building habits and systems that can ensure that I’m performing day in and day out.

And I’ve had lots of successes. I’ve developed lots of great habits that have, indeed, carried me through many hardships and on to various accomplishments in other areas.

But overall, I feel that there’s still a huge ebb and flow of productivity. I get motivated and I go crazy, but then I go through a rough patch and I tell myself I need to relax and take it easy because I just need to recover.

Maybe I’m just trying to do too much at once. Maybe I need to ensure that I never add on more than one thing at a time. That I just add small little things to my day that will help me move forward with various projects.

I’m not sure exactly what the answer is, but I do think that it’s important to just acknowledge that this is more or less as good as it’s going to get, and then plan accordingly.

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To Know is to Love

As documented in earlier posts, every time I move to a new city there is a period where I’m really anxious and uneasy and just struggling to enjoy my time there.

And then over time, as I explore the city more, learn what’s around and where I should go, and establish a route, I eventually relax and even grow to love the city I’m staying in.

The thought came to me on this trip that “to know is to love”.

It came to me in the context of cities, of course. Every restaurant I try, every street I go down, and every person I meet contribute to an increasing knowledge of a place and, with it: an increasing affection.

Upon further reflection, I feel that while the unknown may be enticing, you don’t love the unknown. You can only really love what you know.

So if something is new, you must learn everything you can about it and get to know it well in order to love it.

Nobody really loves anything or anyone they know nothing about.

But when you get to know someone or something, the love seems nearly perfectly correlated with your knowledge and familiarity with them.

This is somewhat related to a portion of dialogue from the movie Lady Bird:

Sister Sarah Joan : You clearly love Sacramento.

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson : I do?

Sister Sarah Joan : You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care.

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson : I was just describing it.

Sister Sarah Joan : Well, it comes across as love.

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson : Sure, I guess I pay attention.

Sister Sarah Joan : Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?

 

Besides being a brilliant piece of writing and possibly the most important and moving scene in the whole film, it’s a similar point to what I’m making.

When you pay attention to things – when you get to know them – you come to love them.

So assuming that these things are all true, I feel like there are a few key insights to be considered:

  1. You can’t really love something you don’t know
  2. If you want to love (or even like) something, you have to take the time to really get to know it
  3. The depth of your love for something (or someone) may be limited by the depth of your understanding or knowledge of them

So in the context of visiting new cities, I think that it’s important that I put a lot of effort into understand how it works and exploring everything.

Perhaps I’ve always understood this on some level, and that’s why I’ve always prioritized meeting people and building those relationships over doing touristy stuff when I travel, which I perceive as being superficial and not great for really getting to know a place.

But I think it certainly applies to relationships as well.

You can’t truly love someone you just met. You have to really get to know them first.

And then to really get to know them, you have to pay close attention and really see them.

I have a friend that is incredible at just noticing what makes people special. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before. But if you ask him about any of his friends, he’s always ready with, “What I love about this friend” and then will follow up with the perfect story demonstrating what he means.

I’ve had him tell stories like that about me, and oftentimes it’s not even something I remember. To me it wasn’t important. But he noticed.

And that comes off as love.

You should always be looking for these things in other people. I’m sure I’ll never reach the level that he is able to do it, but I strive to really pay attention to others and notice what makes them special.

I’m sure these general concepts apply to a lot of things. This is really just the underlying concept.

But I want to keep this in mind and look for more examples of it in the world.

 

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People Who are Struggling at Least Have a Clear Sense of Purpose

This is sort of a weird thought with possibly no discernable value, but still interesting to think through.

People who are really, truly struggling just to live – like people who can’t even afford to buy food or shelter or those in war – have a very clear sense of purpose: survival.

Coming from a first-world country and a middle-class family, I’ve never had to worry about whether or not I’d have food to eat or proper shelter (although much of my childhood was spent in a home that would aggressively leak water from the ceiling when it rained).

When you come from that, the possibilities are endless. I’m guaranteed to have food and shelter, so then… What exactly is my purpose?

Obviously I’m not the first person to question this. Watch any movie from pre-9/11 America and the themes always involve a lack of purpose and rebellion against consumerism since, seemingly, those were the biggest problems facing all Americans at the time.

It’s incredibly silly, but a part of me envies that level of clarity in purpose. You don’t have to question your motivations for anything, you may not have to think long-term because you’re only focusing on surviving another day.

Now obviously, I’m romanticizing a terrible situation and I absolutely do not want any of that. And while I’m describing it as “freedom from the burden of unclear purpose,” it could more accurately described as “not having the privilege of choosing a purpose.”

I’m not a psychologist, but I assume that this envy of that component of things just comes from a more general unease. With unlimited options, I don’t feel like my environment pushes me towards anything.

I think many of us are now faced with the timeless question of, “what do I do with my life?”

I’m not sure we evolved to be equipped to answer that question. And it causes problems.

Part of me thinks that’s the real reason people still have kids. When you care for another life, you feel like you have purpose.

And from what I’ve read, parents are actually less happy than childless individuals, but they do feel more fulfilled. Maybe that purposeless void gets filled for them.

Maybe just having someone that needs you quiets that unsettled part of your mind that’s overwhelmed with a level of opportunity it isn’t equipped to comprehend.

I feel like I know people who are totally content to just be, and I envy them, too (to an extent). They just enjoy what they have and don’t seem to be bothered by any perceived lack of purpose in their life.

I think I’m someone who needs to have some kind of purpose. I need to be working towards something. But as my stretch goals and dreams have slowly become reality, I guess I find myself feeling a little aimless.

I was under no illusions that meeting goals would solve all my problems or suddenly make me fulfilled.

But perhaps I wasn’t fully prepared for what it would feel like to not have a lot of tangible goals left.

Sure, I have financial goals and some personal goals, but whereas in the past I felt like I was seeking an entire “life” that I didn’t know, I now sort of feel like… I have that life.

And like… It’s cool. But what now?

Where do I go from here?

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I’m Constantly Judging Experiences Which Lessens my Enjoyment

This an extension of a thought I had recently which was that I am way too focused on my own enjoyment of things instead of just enjoying them for what they are.

This new thought is related and very similar but distinct.

When I watch a show or read a book or experience just about anything, I feel like I’m still judging it. If I think something is corny, I’ll think about that and judge it. If I think it’s unoriginal or just bad, that’s what I’m thinking about.

And I think the underlying problem is that I’m not allowing myself to be fully invested in it. How can I get lost in an experience if I’m too caught up in my own experience to really enjoy it?

I’ve really been enjoying reading fiction books in Spanish for a while, and to a lesser extent, TV shows as well. And it took me this long to realize that I think it’s because I’m not judging anything.

I’m not asking it to be anything for me. It doesn’t have to be deep, or meaningful, or exciting, or thought-provoking. I only need it to be in Spanish.

And as such, I become much more immersed because I’m not judging it at all. I don’t care how “good” it is or any of the rest. Even if it’s terrible, I’ll still get my Spanish practice in.

As I’m writing this, I realize that this concept is extremely similar to one I noted years ago when I switched from dating with the intention of finding “the one” to dating more casually without any preconceived notions of where it would go.

I found myself enjoying it a lot more and able to just enjoy the other person.

In a regular relationship, I feel like there are all these expectations and you’re always searching for things you don’t like about the other person so you can ask the terrible question, “could I live with this forever?”

Now, I fully acknowledge that this mindset is problematic even if marriage is what you’re after. But I think it’s what pretty much everyone does. I would hope they’d realize this about themselves or, at the very least, stop asking questions like that and at some point simply accept their partner fully along with all their flaws.

But when I wasn’t dating with marriage as the “purpose”, things got a lot simpler.

I became far more patient of things that I didn’t like or would have deemed “incompatible” in the past. Because in the end, what does it matter? Nobody is perfect. And I probably wouldn’t have to deal with that problem forever since we won’t be getting married.

Once again, there is probably more to dig into there and my general attitude could certainly have been improved, but the important thing is the mindset shift.

Instead of focusing either on how the other person made ME feel or some nebulous concept of the future, I became someone who was able to just enjoy the company of another person without judgement.

To finally take the focus off of myself, and focus on someone else.

In my experience, it generally solves or even prevents almost all petty fights or even times where you’re just kind of annoyed at the other person. I learned that many (most?) of those are really just a judgement about the way the other person is. And that the thing they are doing, in isolation, isn’t even the problem.

It’s that the thing represents how they are, and the belief that this thing will keep happening over and over again.

Bringing it back to the original discussion at hand: it involves a shift from focusing on myself to focusing on external things.

I think that, as long as you maintain some level of focus on yourself and how you are feeling, you can never be truly invested in anything around you.

This means movies won’t be as exciting or moving, books won’t transport you to another world, and you’ll never fully enjoy the company of those around you.

Perhaps this is part of the appeal of some drugs; in particular: alcohol. Probably by way of simply decreasing the bandwidth of your brain (i.e. making you too stupid to focus on more than one thing at a time), you can stop focusing on yourself and instead focus entirely on something (or someone) external.

This could allow you to invest in and enjoy things much more.

I’m not entirely sure this is actually true but it seems plausible, at the very least.

I have heard that psychedelics completely dissolve the ego. This may allow you to completely immerse yourself in external things. I know this sounds counter-intuitive since they are usually used to go deeply inward and rework how your brain works.

But if you think about it, they seem to do it from a sort of third-party state. Like you’re looking in as a neutral party.

I’ve heard anecdotally that watching movies or playing video games, for example, is a pretty wild experience because it’s like you are in them. You become so invested that you truly experience everything as if it were real.

Which seems to lend credence to the idea that if you can just turn off the self-focus, you can become much more invested in everything around you and, hopefully, enjoy it a lot more.

And I think that I have increasingly lost the ability to do that and need to put in active work to get it back.

In general, I think I just sort of need to focus less on myself.

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What if my Waning Enjoyment of Most Things Exists to Force Me to do More Important Things?

I’m not sure how much I’ve documented this here, but I feel like, in general, my enjoyment of most of the things I used to love has decreased considerably. In particular, simple entertainment type activities like watching TV or movies or even listening to music is not nearly as enjoyable as it once was.

It could be that there’s something wrong, it could be it’s just part of getting older, or it could be something else entirely.

It’s possible that I have no ability to control it. And if that’s the case, then it doesn’t make much sense to dwell on it.

But there are some things that give me a sort of quiet satisfaction that I enjoy and keeps me coming back.

As it just so happens, most of those things are also good for me.

Things like studying or learning new skill or activities continue to be enjoyable to me and, over time, seem to be what I crave more than anything else.

Reading in general, but more specifically reading in Spanish is something I really like doing and appreciate more and more over time.

I still love all kinds of physical activity like disc golf, working out, and even just walking around my neighborhood. These leave me feeling good and productive.

And it’s satisfying in work when I accomplish things that progress my long-term goals. I maybe don’t enjoy all the day-to-day at every moment (and nobody does), but when I’m working on things that could lead to exponential growth and outsized results, I feel pretty good about that.

In general, it’s really just passive consumption of entertainment that I don’t enjoy as much.

And now that I’m taking a step back and thinking about it… I think that might be a good thing.

Why am I lamenting so much the loss of enjoyment of things that don’t bring a particularly high degree of value?

Maybe I’m not enjoying them as much because I know I have better things to be doing. Maybe I should lean into it and just only do these better things.

After all, they are better for me anyway.

So rather than fight it, I should probably just double-down on the productive and healthy things that make me feel good.