Mystic Sheep Studios

This week I'd like to talk about anxiety, workload, and martial arts.

I'd like to consider myself a fairly relaxed person, but when I'm being honest with myself I know this just isn't the case.    I am a master of taking on too much, being too self-critical, and getting caught in the dark spiral of procrastination and guilt.    I get anxious, stressed, and sometimes downright freaked out.   The thing I'm most likely to get freaked out about?  My own projects and self-imposed deadlines.

You'd think that working from home, on my own projects and with my own deadlines, things'd be easy.  Sadly what it means is:

1. I can never escape my workplace.  Even if I go out (whcih I often do) I'm apt to take my work with me or come up with ideas for my sketchbook.

2. I have no idea what a reasonable work schedule looks like.  In theory I could impose a strict 9-5 (or equivilant) but it tends to fall flat when I realize that I can't fit everything I want to get done into a normal work week and start expanding things, or when I feel rebellious/unproductive one day and blow it off.

3. I have no idea what reasonable project deadlines are.  I've been working on this one but I will say that knowing yourself well enough to know what you can and cannot do in a given timespan is hard.

As I've gotten to know myself and my work habits better, all of these things have gotten easier.  Figuring out the right mix of down time to work time and what I need to do my best (socialization, excercise, free time) has also helped tremendously.    But even with all those things under control anxiety still has a funny way of sneaking up on me.

Unfortunatley emotions don't have a habit of presenting their reasons for being when they appear.  Last week I was squirming in my chair, staring at some blank pages.   Suddenly it hits me: I'm anxious.  Man, that sucks.  Why am I anxious?  Things are going awesome!  What wrong with me?  My life is awesome!  What do I have to be anxious about?   I stopped and took a moment to think.   Okay, I'm behind where I wanted to be with projects, school starts in less than a week and I'm not even packed yet and my black belt test is in less than two weeks.  ... I guess that could be a little anxiety inducing.  Okay then.

   My philosophy to this point has been to do 110% of what I can do, and it isn't working.  I tried that this summer and ended up not only with a case of the crazies but I also failed to even come close to any of my goals.

 I'm told that a principle in T'ai Chi is that, rather than work as hard as you can all the time, it's best to do about 80% of what you know your limit is.  This preserves energy but also makes you more flexible, relaxed, and less likely to be injured.   I'm thinking I need to take a similiar approach to my workload and project deadlines.   Instead of "I know I can do x, y, and z, so I should do xyz+w!" I'm shifting to "I know I can do x, y, and z so I should do xy."  It's counterintuitive but I think it will mean I"ll get more done in the long run--or at least have more fun doing it.

This doesn't mean anything in terms of the amount of work you'll be seeing from me in the future.  If anything, it might make me more productive because I'll be less stressed out.  Or maybe it'll stay the same.  Either way, I hope you look forward to it.

Before I sign off I want to remind everyone of the Caption Contest we're having for Urban Fey.  Since some people have requested it here is the page with no dialog:

You can find more info about the contest here.