Anxiety Boy | Liner Notes – March 2018

Good morning everybody, and welcome to another addition to the Liner Notes series. It’s now March of 2018 and well, it should be the start of spring. Instead we in the UK have been treated to a visit from a certain Beast from the East that’s certainly outstaying its welcome. It has been freezing, it has been snowing and it has been dreadful. Anyway, despite what a lot of media outlets in this country are doing currently, I’m not here to talk about the weather, but wish to talk about something else: anxiety. But before we dive too deep into the wonderment of what’s wrong with our brains, let’s get the blog updates out of the way first. Why? They’re nicer, more informative, and it gives me a little extra time to decide what I really want to talk about.

BLOG NEWS:

• Sounds Good hit all sorts of milestones on social media this past week! 200 Likes on Facebook, 120 Followers on Instagram and a staggering 600 Followers on Twitter. That is incredible and not possible without all of you who did the following / liking / subscribing / whatever the word is these days, so thank you very much.
• This increase in social media stuff has also brought an increase to submissions to the email box. This is GREAT, but also means I’ve got to become a productive pea rather than a lazy slug, so please bear with me. I’ve kept on top of emails this week but won’t burn myself out if it starts to get out of control. This isn’t a full time thing as of yet so sometimes I will wish to spend an evening playing FIFA or something.
• I had the opportunity to contribute to fellow music blog Indientry’s Little Thoughts series. Check out the post in which I list three albums I feel deserve to be heard more and also make sure to check out the rest of Indientry too. It’s become one of my favourite sources of new music and should become one of yours too.

Right, now that’s out the way, let’s talk about the real topic of this Liner Notes post – anxiety. A lot of my time growing into a semi-functioning (see lazy slug) 24 year old had been a joint venture with anxiety, and for most of those years it seemingly had the majority vote in a lot of the decisions and life choices I made. Whether it’s decisions in interactions, settings, opportunities, relationships, it’d play a big part in how I’d react to everything, and would often leave me essentially hating how I was unable to be “normal” in a world full of seemingly normal people.

Anxiety is something that can turn a normal day into an internal struggle to survive at a flick of a mental switch. An everyday conversation with somebody could become a race to end the interaction as soon as possible, and not only leave you red faced for a moment but leave you pondering that interaction for years. It’s got this genuinely fearful ability to turn your normal surroundings into totally foreign territory, and that sucks.

The above is something I’ve begun to experience over the last couple weeks, and I can feel myself slipping back into the mindset I once had of over-analysing everything to the point of wanting to never wanting to go outside again. Suddenly interactions at work become public-speaking levels of NOPE, and fleeting moments of going red in the face loop forever in the brain. It’s ridiculous, but realism is something that never comes to mind during these reflections.

Having dealt with a fresh dose of the stuff on my first day of work right up until I finally felt settled 18 months later, something like this does take a hit on the self-esteem. However, one thing I’ve taken from all these years of dealing with anxiety at varying levels of difficulty is to not care about it and to actually embrace it. Sure, going red in the face is not the best thing, but nothing is better at dealing with it than simply owning it. I like to think that I’m beating anxiety by admitting that I’ve faltered slightly, but know that I’m going to reset to normal very soon.

So yeah, anxiety sucks, but it’s something that everybody deals with from time to time. Unfortunately open discussion is not encouraged enough to dissipate the feeling of loneliness that comes with faltering slightly, but that’s why I’ve decided to talk about it today. It’s not something to constantly fret about, and should certainly not be allowed to have that much power over what you wish to do in life. I remember one specific moment in life I had to give a presentation in class on “something you enjoy” and rather than talk about Music, I decided to talk about Football as I thought that was what everybody would enjoy. The result? I pretty much became a tomato, nearly sweated myself into a coma and nobody liked it, so fuck anxiety. Even succumbing to your pressure gave me a shit result so fuck you. You’re a right bastard.