You don’t know how lucky you are boy…
So today I joined the millions of Americans who solve their everyday problems by imbibing psychotropic drugs. I’m not 100% excited about this, but after a series of talk-therapy sessions, I realize that this avenue has gone long untraveled and it’s time that I explored it.
Apparently I have what is called Generalized Anxiety Disorder which just means I worry about a lot of shit that I shouldn’t be worrying about to the point that my thoughts are intrusive on my daily life. Technically what is happening is a constant misfire of my synapses that gets my natural “Fight or Flight” function confused so that it’s basically “always on.”
Actually, that little tidbit of biological information explains a lot about my last 5 years. I’ve been constantly running away from, or irrationally avoiding, situations that– although not totally enjoyable– were only moderately uncomfortable. This anxiety has not only permeated my well-documented distaste for the IT field but also created barriers in endeavors I should have been more excited about. In the past five years I’ve turned down last-minute calls for gigs because of my anxiety. I’ve had terrible on-stage experiences that I would attribute entirely to over-thinking the situation and irrational panic. This only takes into consideration about the last five years, but looking through the archives of this blog, I can find plenty of examples in reflections on my college years and my anxiety was no doubt an intrusion on my learning experiences at Berklee and ended with a crescendo of full-grown panic attacks during my last weeks living in Boston.
It’s like that Mike Ness lyric: “you can run all your life but not get anywhere.”
When I expressed my reluctance to taking meds to the Doc she even said “If you had high blood pressure you wouldn’t think anything of taking medicine. Sure, you hate your job, but you do have anxiety. If you had another job you’d still have anxiety.”
Cold hard medical logic. She’s right.
So here we are.
Bottoms up.
That is not to say that taking medication every day is going to make me suddenly love working in the IT field. In fact, I am hoping for the opposite. I hope that getting my head straight is what I need to either propel myself out of this field and onto something I truly enjoy, or give me the calm required to plan and execute a geographical move elsewhere or maybe even a new plan altogether that I haven’t even considered under the influence of my own negative thoughts.
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