The Soul-Crushing Panic of Everything Being Fine

[jlengstorf]

I started a draft of this a long time back but tabled it because I was worried it would alienate people. After all, this is a post that effectively says, "I'm sad because I don't have any problems."

However, yesterday I had dinner with Ivan, and this idea came up. And I realized that we both had the same fear: if we talk about it, people will take offense because this isn't a "real" problem.

(And for the record, I agree that on the overall spectrum of problems, feeling despondent because you've solved all of your problems and feel restless is entirely in the shallow end.)

But just because this isn't a life-threatening problem — and if we get into a dick-measuring contest about whose problems are "real", it'll get humbling in a hurry: "Oh, you can't afford to buy food? There are people in Louisiana who don't even have access to food, even if they could afford it." "Oh yeah? Well, 87% of the people in Afghanistan don't even have access to clean water." — doesn't mean that it shouldn't be discussed.

So I'm nervous about this one because I don't want to appear to be a privileged, fragile whiner. But I want to put it out there because I think there are a lot of other reasonably successful people who might be feeling the same thing — both the anxiety about what to do now that they've met their goals and the hesitance to share that feeling with anyone else.

But fuck it: I need to be willing to risk my ego if I expect to write anything interesting, right?

[ivanfetch]

Rather than feeling that I've run out of problems, I feel that in a particular area of my life, I want to sustain a rate of climb and success which has recently appeared more difficult due to <<insert complicated feeling circumstantial challenge here>>. The pursuit of more / better always brings new problems; challenges to be solved.

A sense of wonder fades with degrees of mastery, but if I wasn't tracking that progression and I reach one of the peaks in my climb unexpectedly, my automatic reaction is dismay that my intrigue has suddenly felt lower, or that the next phase of the climb is less certain or significantly steeper. Sometimes the definition of success morphs as my goals get closer, but if that too is something I wasn't aware of, it sneaks up on me as emptiness, or that I'm suddenly misaligned with my goals and have spent weeks driving in the wrong direction with my head up my ass.

Sometimes a person or process in my day job keeps closing parts of the trail which impacts my climb, and I get frustrated and hyper critical about who (as in no assholes) or what I perceive the bottleneck to be.

The temptation to "burn everything down" and gallop off in a new direction, is an attempt to get back on track fastest with a realigned goal and a pie in the sky to wonder at. Sometimes I think this could also be laziness or fear about continuing the climb, but mostly I don't believe that.

Diversifying my projects can help with this, but work is a significant place I spend my time, and if my day job is too much of a vortex it robs my brain power and soul, impacting my other projects. I can diversify my work too (multiple contracts), but eventually the context switching is too expensive.

I don't think this topic alienates people, it's the pursuit of a deeper awareness and mode of operating. The Changes to the hierarchy by circumstance section of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs Wikipedia article addresses the "this isn't a real problem" dilemma. The opening paragraph of that section speaks to your point about it getting humbling in a hurry - "The higher-order (self-esteem and self-actualization) and lower-order (physiological, safety, and love) needs classification of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not universal and may vary across cultures due to individual differences and availability of resources in the region or geopolitical entity/country." So, this may not be as deep of a concern for others because their existence is different - they are working on other levels of Maslow's hierarchy in other areas of their life (optimizing for something else), or they are more grounded (balance / presence of mind), or they are just happier to coast...

[jlengstorf]

A sense of wonder fades with degrees of mastery, but if I wasn't tracking that progression and I reach one of the peaks in my climb unexpectedly, my automatic reaction is dismay

This is a salient point, and digs at the heart of what I was trying to convey in I'll Be Happy When.... The more I break down my experiences, the more I realize that more or less every negative emotion I experience is due to a violation of my expectations:

• I'm sad when I didn't think through how a goal would turn out
• I'm angry when I thought things would be one way (or didn't think about them at all) and they turn out differently
• I'm hurt when I expect someone to treat me one way, and they treat me differently

This seems to be true to the extent that I'm half-tempted to create a new Golden Rule:

Manage expectations.

:)