Cali, Cancelling & Candor

Sorry for the day late send today. I’m on West Coast time & I’ve been traveling all week. Even newsletter writers who work 1 day a week deserve a day off sometimes.

Anyways, I started in LA, then came to San Diego & right now I’m headed to Chicago for the week. It’s been awesome. It’s also been difficult. Let me explain…

I booked this trip because of a two reasons:

1) I had no lease

2) I had no job

Since I’m not paying rent, I could afford to book a decently long trip. I haven’t been to the west coast in a while too, so it made sense to get out and explore. Get out of my comfort zone. Connect with some old friends.

However, what I didn’t account for was how traveling tends to seriously spike my anxiety. I’m not sure why, but every time I travel, everything starts to get overwhelming. I’ve never liked flying either so that doesn’t help.

Let me just say I don’t really like talking about anxiety, but since it’s basically all I can think about… That’s what I’m going to be doing today.

I’ve been working on all of this for a while. Grounding myself. Being present. Enjoying the ride. Anxiety fucking sucks. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t made any progress… maybe even regressed. As I sit here and type this, I’m feeling ok. But there have been moments this week where my anxiety has made normal things nearly impossible.

Mental health is a crazy thing. You’re physically fine. Not visibly sick or ill whatsoever. So it’s so hard to wrap your ahead around the fact that you’re not feeling 100%. There’s no physical evidence to really support how you’re feeling. So sometimes you doubt it, debate it & question it.

Lately, I’m finding it helpful to acknowledge my anxiety & even more helpful to talk about it. Telling those close to you how you’re feeling is important. It brings it all to the surface. Potentially minimizes it. And maybe sometimes you can get to the root of it. Sometimes I like to think of it as an evil vampire, and when it gets hit with sunlight, it crashes and burns

.Take that, Edward Cullen. Sorry for the heavier-ish intro today… but hey, this shit is a wild ride with ebs and flows. Ups and downs. Welcome to week 9 of Trust Fun.

Doing What You Wanna Do

I had a conversation this week with someone who told me they were done doing stuff they didn’t want to do. Finished. Over. Let me explain.

Obviously, we’re all adults. We can make decisions like this. If we don’t wanna go somewhere or do something, then don’t. Right?

However, there is also the flip side of this… There are going to be things you don’t want to do that you have to do. No if ands or buts about it. Sometimes, no matter how badly you don’t want to do something, you gotta do it.

However, in the context of my friend, I found their ability to say no to to this particular thing interesting. Here’s the context. I’m sure we can all relate.

He was supposed to be going to a concert that he had bought a ticket for a while back. It was that night. And there was a group of his good friends meeting up at the show to have an epic night. Dancing, drinking etc. My friend said he hadn’t gone out in a while & he was feeling tons of pressure to go.

Originally, it probably seemed like an awesome idea. That’s why he bought the ticket. However, he just wasn’t interested in having a night out with this particular group of friends or participating in this particular type of activities.

He also generally wasn’t “tired” or “feeling sick.” He actually still wanted to maybe do something… just not this. However, this was the plan he had, a large group of his friends were going, and usually, that’s that. That’s tends to be enough.

You normally just do the thing. That’s that. Even if at that moment you don’t really want to. Otherwise, you’re forced to create some elaborate excuse.

But why? Not wanting to go should be enough of a reason to sit something out.

I’ve struggled with this. I do things (especially socially) all the time, that I don’t want to do because I didn’t want to let someone down or I couldn’t rationalize a good enough excuse to “get out of it.”

But why do we always need to “get out of it?” It’s kinda dumb when you think about it. Just don’t go. Sit it out. Tell your friends, “Hey, I’m not feeling it.” They should respect that.

Editors Note: This advice really only implies to casual social situations for the most part. Don’t skip Thanksgiving, your nephews birthday or a Hinge Date.

Short and sweet today. Sorry it was late. Won’t happen again.

Love you guys. Thanks for bearing with me. Working through some shit this week but we’re on the up and up.

Oh, also, I got a job. More on that next week. Back to Monday’s too.