2021-03-09
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I was just thinking about the relationship between guilt, anxiety
and responsibility yesterday. Today I read this:

gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20210308.txt

It's more poetic than what I was thinking, and sums the
situation a lot better than I can, but anyway, I'm going to write
a few words about it, since it is on the back of my mind.

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I actually browsed through some self help stuff yesterday about
how to relate to feeling guilty about feeling anxious. I don't
usually look at any of this stuff since it is so disgustingly
growth-hacky. But I sort of got some idea of what might help me
conceptualize what I have been going through. The term chronic
guilt seemed to hit home in some way.

What makes this hard to pin down is that I can't see any clear
line between just plain old responsibility and guilt. It seems
that in order to be responsible, I have to "sign on" to feeling
guilty about possibly not living up to the responsibilities I 
take on. Being "too" guilty seems to me to turn into the physical
manifestation of anxiety, which also has a long tail of purely
mental symptoms.

Then there is the side of not feeling like I have the "right" to
burden anyone's (mostly my spouse's) existance by dragging them
down by feeling anxious or dull or sad. Of course the self help
growd says I do have this right, but I don't think I should have
a blank check to just indefinitely wallow or something.

Also, I feel like I owe it to myself, pardon the cliche, to
actually get something done in life. Yes, the world is not really
the bounty of opportunities that the venture capitalists say it
is, but I am highly capable in my area of expertise and to just
stay in a relatively small pond and not to challenge myself seems
"wrong".

So, there are several sides to this. One nasty blind spot is that
it is quite hard to know when I am doing too much and beginning
to get to the edge of anxiety.

One of the best things that I did was to lower my working
hours, which has helped me to say that I am not "as responsible"
as the other people. I have "an excuse" to do less, since I
am paid less. This probably doesn't even make sense to anyone
without a similar affliction, but it is sort of like I do 120 
per cent all the time anyway when I am concentrating, so by
lowering the working hours I get closer to 100 percent.
Although, it seems to me I am more productive now than I was
when I was working a regular week.