Mini Newsletter: Does Anyone Else Feel Like This??

Hello!

It’s Hank. A few years ago, I said to a friend of mine, “…and you know how taking time off work is always uncomfortable, right?” and he was like, “Uh….no??”

When I take time off work, I experience a sort of whole-body sensation that I’ve never really been able to place. It’s like a twingey feeling right behind my eyes, a sensitivity in the skin, and a general, overall discomfort.

I used to call it “ennui” but I don’t actually think that’s what it is. For the first time in my life, now that I am 44 years old, I think I have figured out that it is simply fear. Honestly, I start most of my days kinda scared. As I move through the day, I do things and then I start to feel more in control of my life and the fear wears down.

But when my days are unstructured, I never get ahead of my fear. I feel that I am wasting time… The problems are sitting just out of view and are getting worse and worse. And here’s the thing, I’m probably not wrong!

I am working on this in a couple of ways. First, as one of my characters said in my second novel, “You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce.” This was obviously something that I said specifically to myself. Second, I try to create other problems to solve. What activity can I do with my family? How can I see a friend I haven’t hung out with in a while? Or maybe it’s something as simple as a craft project. Making art is a process of constantly solving problems, which is why I find it so rewarding.

I dunno, it’s clearly something I need to work on. I would like to be happy just being me!! But responsibilities are scary and I feel like a bad person not focusing on them. I have all the same worries without any of the actions taken to lessen them.

There’s a deeper thing at the root that is very hard for me to push back against. I know that this feeling isn’t universal, but I wonder if other people have this as well. Do people know what I’m talking about? Is there a name for it?

Hank

P.S. I made you three Connections games for Christmas. We’ve got an easy one, a medium one, and a hard one!

We're Here is the newsletter of Nerdfighteria; the community of people that sprung up around Hank and John Green's YouTube videos. That community has many focuses and has spawned many projects but the overarching theme is that hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection. What makes the world better is groups of people trying to understand and solve problems, and people can only do that for an extended period if they're having at least a little bit of fun.