Alice Buell Lawrence

I wish I could say I was a perfectly calm and contented writer and person. I’m not. I never really have been. I was an anxious teenager, something that has continued into my adulthood. I don’t have screens or anything to blame it on: I grew up before smartphones and the like. I was just always nervous about the world around me.

Sometimes I can use that as fuel, observing my thoughts and feelings and finding the truths in it that can make characters more real. More often than not, though, it just serves to sap me of energy.

I had five days off from work last week, and it was in the midst of that where a story idea came to me, one I sat down and wrote the next morning. It felt great to be in that flow space, something that doesn’t happen often enough.

And that’s because of my day job, which stresses me immensely. Note: it is not an arduous or challenging job. I’m just a fish out of water with it, outside of what the rest of my career has been, and I don’t know what I’m doing. Worse, I have minimal guidance on what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m desperately trying to find something else, some certainty under my feet.

I certainly don’t have the gravitas to just write for a living, especially with only the couple of publication credits under my belt. It would take immense luck to be in the self-sufficient stage of writing. And a lot of help, a lot of friends. Maybe someday, but not now.

Which, for me, means I need to get back into the work I know so that I can attempt to relax again, unclench just a bit, finding the mental and temporal space to practice my craft.

Anxiety is a tricky bugger, one that really digs into quality of life. I’ve lived with both anxiety and depression most of my life; I’m grateful to be on a cocktail of meds that doesn’t sap me of my creativity. Just the day-to-day does that.

I write and/or edit at least a little bit every day. I try to spend a weekend day each week with my focus there as well. My writing is important to me, something I simply have to do. Holding it in because I come home from work utterly exhausted isn’t a long-term option. I need to make a change.

I’m planning that change. I have probably a dozen major projects I still want to write, and I need to have a job that leaves my head some room. It would be an immense privilege to be back there. And if I can’t write for a living, it’s the next best thing for which I can strive.

Just makes me a little anxious, you know?