The anxiety of low anxiety

How can I still be anxious here?

Disclaimer: the following entry is drenched in privilege and an embarrassing level of “first-world problem” angst.

Our second day in Crete I woke up at 3am with all of my back muscles spasming. It was the first time on this trip, but a more normal than not way to greet 3am for my last 12 years of running non-profits, building a start-up, raising small children, and trying to be an active community member.

Since I left the start-up in 2019, I have slowed down. A lot. I have spent the last two years discovering that people will pay me enough (for my modest ambitions) to do work I like. I spent time as a volunteer with organizations I care about. I learned a lot about how much the atmosphere in which I work and the team I work with matters to me.

For twelve years, four nights out of seven Theresa and I would put the kids down and get back online, in what one similar set of friends called the "dueling laptop game.” In the two years before we left, we would only do that one night out of seven. For the last year-ish, we exercised almost every day- often just a half-hour, but something. During COVID, even as Theresa’s work accelerated to a more feverish pitch, I had capacity to keep the wheels on our life.

I'm on my second job in which, while I care a lot about the content and the outcomes, important limits are set by people whose pace and risk tolerance are much slower and lower than mine- forcing me to slow down, communicate more, and give the people around me time to process.

I’m currently traveling the world with my family, at a pace of our choosing, in what is the culmination of a decade’s dreaming and planning.

So why is my back spasming with stress?

Feels like the walls are closing in…

(side note: much of Turkey isn’t built for tall people)

There have been stressful moments on this trip, and it is surprising (to me) how much work has been required just to keep the logistics going. Places to stay and rental cars and trains and public transport and stuff to see/do in each place, particular for a group our size has been a lot. The Balkans in particular felt like a huge and potentially high-risk project, even with the help of my amazing co-captain.

But once that was over, now that we have a rhythm, a solid team dynamic, and we are looking ahead to the relative ease of Greece, Istanbul, and Italy, that’s when I wake up at 3am.

After some fruitless hours reading, counting sheep, and trying to coax myself back to sleep, I creep outside to welcome the dawn. 

I think I’m addicted to the anxiety. The activities of planning the days, keeping tabs on things at home, and plotting the road ahead have been methadone, taking the edge off my constant need to achieve and be needed.

In that absence, what remains?

The easiest thing (indeed I think my subconscious plan before we left) would be to substitute one kind of achievement for another.  I definitely said to close friends, “we’re using a different set of muscles, and that’s great.”  I’m going to write a book, actually, two books, learn the piano, journal, exercise, meditate, and spend time with the kids teaching them history and Go and backgammon.  I took a part-time gig with UofL (awesome in lots of ways) that kept me connected to the world I left.

Who am I if I am not achieving?

I’m obsessed with the idea of purpose and purposeful work (the subject of an eventual Ph.D.), and I have no illusions that it is healthy over any period of time to not have a purpose beyond one’s self.  But when I think about the last twelve years, I can remember hiding in the bow of a boat, checking e-mail, even though I promised to be offline.  I remember tweaking financial models in hotel rooms when I was supposed to be napping.  I remember tweaking elevator pitches as I jogged down the beach.  I remember half-listening to my children tell me stories as I contemplated how to enter a different market or how to approach my Board about a change I wanted to make. That’s not healthy either.

It is impossible to convey the unbridled glee of my children as I tried pickled beets and pickled peppers (which I correctly assessed that I would hate).

In the same way I am forcing my children to try different foods as we journey, I want to think about forcing myself to behave differently, and maybe come to a different way of thinking about achievement.  What if I let myself move at a different pace and did not keep score?

What if I’m not needed for a season?

Honestly, that scares me more than I would have thought.

And when I think of my friends who exited companies only to jump back into the fray, or retired and “unretired” in short order, I know I’m not the only person to have struggled with this.  But I am struggling with it.

Maybe ultimately, I won’t like it. Maybe I love the struggle, and it’s the right choice for me. Maybe I’ll find a new way to contribute that isn’t so all consuming.

But I want the choice to be a real one, not a default setting programmed into me by a lifetime of chasing the hoops in front of me.