#I am so deeply anxious

[itspileofgoodthings]

Love Nina so much because she a) loves, appreciates, and respects me; b) thinks I’m a little cringe sometimes, kind of annoying, maybe a Bit Much. Totally neutralizes all anxiety in the relationship for me.

[dandelionsandderivatives]

I have some friends coming over tonight. For most of them it's their first time at my place, and it's my first time hosting anything more than "a couple people were here for a few hours" in. . . too long.

I'm really, really anxious that they'll think my taste in movies is cringe and that the food won't be right. I still have to scrub my bathroom.

[sxcret-garden]

,

[riacte]

so hey guys i finished dungeon meshi yesterday and i'm still thinking about it

[iraprince]

Hiii, i love your stuff and kinda from a distance really look up at you for, in my perception, being able to express yourself without giving a fuck. Thats sick dude, Im so so afraid, of absolutely everything, its nice to think like i might grow into someone less apologetic of my existence. Nice to see people just being yknow

hey, thank you, this is really really nice. the secret that is probably not a secret is that i am also deeply afraid a lot of the time lmao -- but less than i used to be, and in ways that feel less stifling and self-suffocating, if that makes sense.

like, it used to be "i'm scared that if i express myself the way i want to, everyone will find me obnoxious, so let's just sand those edges down to be safe" -- now my fears are more like "now that i'm expressing myself in a way that feels natural and real, i'm afraid that it's all stupid/vapid/not worthwhile or meaningful" (<- specifically abt my art) or "i'm happy that i talk and act the way i want to now, but what if it makes me impossible to befriend," etc etc etc. which still feels bad and puts me in a funk a lot of the time but at least it's a fear that comes After/in reaction to doing stuff, rather than a fear that STOPS me from doing stuff, you know? like, it's evolved into a kind of fear that's less in my way.

anyway. i believe you'll experience something like this, because wanting to grow is the first step of growing. the fact that u hope or wish for something different means you're already on your way. to fewer fucks!! or at least distributing the fucks u give in a way that serves u better

[starsandnoodles]

The following is going to be really weird for me uh

I’ve been writing this thing called “The Magologs” since February. I have literally over 40 of these now and after much debate and anxiety about it I’ve finally started posting them on A03!

Currently the first 3 are up! I’ll be posting them daily until we get caught up with what I already have written! So if you like Magolor you MIGHT like this thing (especially assuming you like stuff written from a characters perspective hehehe)

[tamagotchikgs]

i feel like i was actually doing good n felt human for a bit n now ive dramatically fallen so far back

[monstermp3]

for the first time in my life... i ran away from something that i was scared of, all because i panicked and gave in to my insecurity. i could've done so much better than that!!!! i'm so disappointed in myself!! i guess the only good thing that came out of it was that i now know that the worst thing i could do isn't getting something wrong or admitting that i don't have an answer... it's running away.

[umemiyan]

oh btw since i didn’t get to add him in the post earlier because i literally ran out of room: kaiser’s stability levels noticeably decrease even further when he misses me. he’s exponentially cuntier but also has moments where he’s so silent that people are like... afraid lmfao

he tries to throw himself into plays so extra hard until he’s overdoing it and/or having a meltdown because he screwed up until noa or someone calls me like “how quickly can we arrange to get you here???”

[remyfire]

When the writer agonies hit.

[astralarias]

hmm trying to actually treat myself like how I would when I have a chronic pain flareup…like just allowing myself to rest and not trying to power through to feel better. it’s weird and hard but I’m trying.

[mosstrades]

im someone who stuggles not to let his curiosity and drive sometimes (often) cross over into an overwhelming and maladaptive need for answers, for explanation, for certainty. someone who, historically, sees making art as a primarily intellectual exercise. this is not inherently a bad thing, we all have our temperaments and this kind of attention can be a strength. but, you know that artist who makes a painting, and then only wants to show it while explaining it to you? thats me, sometimes, more often than i like. every story i used to write had another hundred page document behind it, explicating every single choice -- often i would simply read that, instead of ever actually write the story itself. the explanation precedes everything. the answers alone are the experience.

david lynch's work and philosphy has been and is a vital foothold in my efforts to learn to love the questions as our breath. learn to appreciate intuition and dreams, trust them instead of fear them. learn to see that the world has so much confusing, uncertain, strange beauty, that can be terrifying but turns sublime when you cease rejecting it from fear. when you embrace the unknown and dont try to immediately & anxiously explicate it all away, a whole new world opens up to you. that you need the darkness in order to dream, and you need dreams in order to live fully immersed in what the world has to offer. a foothold in learning to be okay with abstraction, with imperfect subjectivity, with uncertainty. to know it is not anthitetical to truth and meaning. know that to skillfully make ideas come alive into a work *is* to rationally pin them down, but that you cannot lose sight of the intuition they were born as.

his artistic intuition reminds me of what i need to have -- the trust and humility for experiencing the inexplicable and understanding that to be enough. a devotion to ideas and their realisation. a balancing force, for my endless inquiry -- to not forget to live the question in my the search for an answer. to allow some thing to go without clear or universal explanation, allow for some things to remain unresolved, allow for others to have that be their resolution. it's why his work equal parts captivates me and disturbs me -- i am very bad at this. but feel in my heart a need to get better at it. to be a better artist, a better thinker, a better searcher, a better person. you need to feel it, intuitively, quiet your endless noisy need for an answer and simply let it fill you up, let it resonate intuitively, and find in that how life makes sense to you and you alone. mediation, mindfulness, humility to sit with abstraction without trying to pin it down. more and more i try to understand this. some things don't need to make perfect sense. some things dont need answers, or their answers are not the point. some things dont need anything but to be experienced as they enter you -- like dreams do. that can lead you to the answer, and that can also be enough in itself. that can be just an intrinsic value in being alive to experience it. and so often, it is all in conversation with the search for joy. it's why he feels so captivating, so unique, so tremendously alive. why people use the word "visionary" when talking about him. because he knew how to use his medium in all the potential he could see, so that it let you live in the strangeness and questions. he understood them as sublime, he understood them as enough, he understood them as a joy. he understood them as beautiful. and his memory will remind me to do the same; always to seek the space to dream.

[antigerrymanderingspiderman]

what if i just throw up what then

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

Seeing that Hartswood has a 6 month waiting list on the Queer Liberation Library is making me go :3 :3 :3

[femaleconartist]

My body will be like *takes 6 months to gain 1 kg* *loses it in 2 days*

[giantkillerjack]

Ya know. I spent most of my life with horrible painful soul-crushing social anxiety.

And after about 25 years of continuous hard work, suddenly, people started pointing out - to my utter bafflement - that I had, in fact, achieved my lifelong dream of being charismatic. I'm 29 now; I feel comfortable in most social situations, and it is a very rare person whom I cannot make laugh.

I am, undoubtedly, finally, charismatic.

But do you know what I found?

I found that now that I have an understanding of which social rules serve which functions -- Now that I have an understanding of just how much damage my awkwardness was doing to people, well,

I found that, actually, my awkwardness never really hurt anyone at all. People were just judgmental dicks to me about it.

Now that I have the skill-level to (most of the time) creatively vocalize what is in my head as soon as I think it and without fear, I can confirm once and for all what I had always suspected:

I was worth talking to when I was quiet.

I was worth talking to when I was awkward, and when the words in my head took time and patience to hear, and when most of my jokes didn't land. I was worth talking to the whole time.

So I just... I hope that if you've ever wondered whether you are worth communicating with, the answer is yes. Absolutely yes. Each of us has a soul worth sharing - and if you and I were talking, I would happily wait for you to speak (or communicate in other ways) without condescending, and I would never shame you for that harmless awkwardness that so many people feel the need to violently stomp out.

You are worth talking to. You just are. And you deserve people who will speak to you with kindness, with patience, and with the basic immutable respect owed to all people.

(I talk about this with some frequency, both on tumblr and in real life. At some point, maybe I'll gather all my thoughts on the matter into one post. At some point, I wrote about my personal experience trying to build my social skill. But I felt the need to say at least a little bit tonight after seeing this other lovely post, and I'm glad I did. It will happen again.)