It was raining in East Tennessee when I started writing this.
I need rainy days. They are a gentle reminder that it's OK to sit inside and do nothing.
Rainy and gloomy weather is the best. Actually, there is nothing better than a hot, sunny lake day in early July. But I am most happy when I wake up to snowfall on a December morning. I also can't wait for the feeling I get when the SEC on CBS music starts playing while my windows are open at 3:30 on a crisp October afternoon.
It's currently August, and a lot like what was just displayed in the previous paragraph, I am confused with this month. It doesn't feel like summer anymore, but it's hotter than summer ever thought about being. It's not fall yet, but I wish it was. In the winter I'll wish it was warmer and in the late summer, I wish it was colder.
That's just the world I live in.
Today's Saturday. It's sunny and 90 outside. Sometimes on these mornings, I put on a Youtube video of someone simply walking around with a camera on a rainy day in Chicago just to feel like I'm living in that reality for a while.
I say all this as I come to the realization that I like a ton of different things but hardly at the right time.
I credit that to moving away from my comfort zone 2 separate times.
And my anxiety.
I'm someone who lives life anxious, full of worry, and somehow equally under-satisfied and hopelessly overwhelmed at the same time. I have an inner dialog that talks to me all day, every day. It's usually the worst after I turn the TV off at night. So I usually don't turn the TV off at night.
I live in a city where I don't know anyone and I'm a 7 and a half hour drive from home. This is the 2nd city I've up and moved to without knowing anyone, however, the previous one was 9 hours away. Progress? Regress? Who knows.
I'm more of an overthinker than I am a talker, so it suits me better than it sounds. I moved away from my family and friends roughly 4 and a half years ago now. The past year has been the year I've spent the most alone. And in this past year, I've realized a shift in where I am getting my anxiety and worry from.
Me.
It was hard to manage when it was coming from external things. Previously, I was living in a city that was much busier, with more people my age in the local coffee shop locked in on their laptops, more people walking to get their lunch during the middle of a work day, and more 20 to 30 somethings simply living life around me. More people figuring it out individually, together. You know, like a city people move to. Not grow up in.
It was somehow comforting while extremely overwhelming because that meant more interactions and gatherings. Which also meant more possibilities of being introduced to someone new and the only thought in my mind is this is just another chance that I'm meeting one more person who might not like me, or get me.
Moving to East Tennessee sounded relaxing. And it is. It's also a place more people grow up in. So it leads me to see more of the family of 6 getting out of their GMC Denali SUV strolling into the same restaurant I sit alone at. Or the group of high school friends sitting in the Starbucks as I sit in the corner getting lost in the music coming through my headphones and hidden behind my laptop typing shit out like this.
I miss walking into coffee shops with other people who are alone. I miss going to different restaurants and sitting next to people in the same stage of life as me. I miss hanging out with groups of people on Saturday afternoons in the apartment pool for seemingly no logical reason other than the fact we all just happen to live in the same 27-story building at the exact time in our lives.
As I mentioned, my anxiety is coming from within more than ever now. I'm comparing myself to people I don't even know... or want to be? I find that I'm concerning myself with the fact that this family of 6 probably came from their $899,000 home and how nice that might be. But I don't even want to be paying an HOA fee, or a mortgage, or mowing my own lawn, or having to fix my own dishwasher when it starts to leak. I find myself stuck in the past at Starbucks thinking about when I was in high school and how shitty of a job I do keeping up with people.
I find that I'm more present recently than I ever was before. Maybe that's because it's just me, myself, and I every day, or maybe it's the fact that I'm actively aware I'm becoming the source of my own anxiety and that's easier to deal with than the fact that I used to have to give myself a pep talk in the mirror before going to be with people I genuinely loved due to my brain talking itself into the very (true or false) fact that they probably don't like me. Even though they've never actually given me that indication.
After typing out and rereading that dumb run-on sentence that would have gotten me kicked out of AP Language in school, I am now realizing that maybe I've been the main source of my own anxiety this entire time.
I'm kidding, that's a timely joke because you need to make jokes around sad realities every once in a while. I knew that was the case all along. I just don't have anyone else to blame it on now.
It's kind of funny given those last two paragraphs but I am happy with myself and I wake up most days OK with the fact that I have to do life today. I used to not. I was scared and overwhelmed that I was constantly scared and overwhelmed while also worrying that other people might know I was scared and overwhelmed about the harsh reality that I don't know how to do any of this.
In doing life alone I'm constantly trying to talk myself into doing two things. Different things and hard things. I've done a pretty good job at the different part. The hard part is what I continue to beat myself up over. I'm learning that I believe I'm failing at doing hard things because I'm judging myself on what others see as hard.
I have a miserable relationship with self-talk. I suck at it. I think I constantly sell myself short internally because I feel like if I can do something, it must not be very hard. The fact of the matter is I do hard shit daily. I wake up in a city I moved to without ever seeing it in person, not knowing anyone, and do life, every day. Alone. That's hard. (I also shot 79 the other day after not playing golf for a month... which adds no value to the story whatsoever but f*ck it.)
I put other people's ideas of what difficult is in my head to judge myself on only to consistently fail. The fact of the matter is most people have no earthly idea what it's like to live outside of their comfort zone or live 9 hours away from what they've always known life to be. The other fact of the matter I should be focusing on is why do I care what others' idea of difficult is when I don't even want to be doing it in the first place.
Honestly, that question to myself would score bonus points in therapy... so I'll save our time trying to figure it out here.
I spend so much time trying to figure out if I'm doing all of this right. I often come up with the conclusion that, no, I'm probably not. I also spend so much time trying to figure out why I'm judging myself based on things that I don't even necessarily believe in.
It's no longer raining here in East Tennessee.
It's sunny and 90... I wish it was cloudy.
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