I was so anxious over the weekend that I’m pretty sure I gave the dog hives. This isn’t something I’m particularly proud of. It’s one thing to impact me, but the dog? I felt so bad for him, this 25 pound dog covered in lumps the size of my thumb. So, as I held him waiting for his Benadryl to kick in, I laid on the couch for the first moment in what felt like the entire weekend. 

Debilitating anxiety is just one of those things I’ve learned to live with. I can feel the anxiety creeping up like the build up of a horror movie where I know something is coming and I jump out of my seat when the thing pops out. Probably worth noting I really hate horror movies. The traditional solutions provided by Western medicine don’t really fix it for me. Most anxiety meds make me feel like a dulled down version of myself. Worse, it never quite nipped that panic I feel when the anxiety reaches level 100. Over the years since I tried the medications, I’ve searched for a million different alternatives to soothe that feeling. I have done traditional talk therapy, worked out, journaled, and a million other options that didn’t work. 

This week as I felt the anxiety start to wash over me, I defaulted to scrolling. The one thing I know will definitely make everything worse. The headlines about everything happening in the world just made that knot inside my stomach tighten. When I realized what I was doing to myself, I slammed the phone down. “Enough,” I said under my breath. Then, I opened my journal to the next blank page. 

For years, this is the moment where I would make a plan. A list. Anything to make me feel like I was doing something to manage my anxiety. I was raised by a single mother who always went first to action. Even when there was no will, she found a way. As much as that worked for the first half of my life, it was a direct contributor to burnout in my 30s because if I wasn’t fixing the problem; I used all my energy to worry about it. I never rested. It left me exhausted and without a solution. So instead of making a list this time, I tried something new: creativity. I wrote:

"What if work was a passion project instead of another task to do?” 

I was surprised how it made me feel to write things like “I would be able to stop whenever I wanted” and “it wouldn’t be my top priority.” These are things I know are true, but values I discarded when I moved back into a house and didn’t have the forced breaks that come with van life like campsite check out times. 

As I continued to write, the dread and anxiety slowly started to dissipate. I felt free, but maybe it was something else I’ve been craving. I think they call it hope. 

Breaking the rules that tell me I need a plan and replacing them with wide open spaces and imagination have saved my sanity. I know I can’t control the world. I don’t know if all the entry level jobs will be erased or the Anthropic report about job loss is true. But I do know this. What I need when I feel anxious isn’t a plan that will be rendered useless in a week. No, what I crave is creativity. Curiosity. Hope that tomorrow might be better than today, even if I have no plan at all.