When fun was still fun

Last night, I was having (one of) my mid-twenties version of considering the difference between being a kid and being an adult. But then I started wondering if maybe I was really talking about the difference between having an anxiety disorder and not having one. I was considering fun. As a child, I remember dancing and getting ready for recitals and the big recital we did one year that my mom didn't like as well because it was too big and too fancy and we did it three times. I enjoyed it. For me, the fun still thoroughly overshadowed the drawbacks. Now, I'm in this show, and part of me is enjoying it, while part of me is stressing over it. Hence the anxiety disorder spin. Having fun is a lot more difficult when you add in various persistant (but at least some of them unlikely) fears. Suddenly, a "fun" activity is one that doesn't get swamped by anxiety. Okay, I think I'm getting too philosophical for my current mental state. Maybe it makes more sense at 10 o'clock at night. The moral of the story is that the things I do for fun now can be threatened by anxieties, and the anxieties make the "fun" activity turn into work. If the enjoyment is not swamped by anxiety, then the net effect is that the "fun" activity wears me out a bit, but I still have fun. If the anxiety plays the trump card, well, I had some fun, but that was work.

I think I will go endeavor to help the people working on the sets for the musical... maybe that will quiet my oversensitive guilt compass. One hour. That isn't much. Is it enough? Blah, blah, blah... There's some anxious thinking with no solid answer, so let's not look too hard for the non-existant 100% certainly correct answer.

Comments

  1. ElizaJuly 29, 2012 at 11:17 AM

    I totally get where you're coming from. It's the same for me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tina Fariss BarbourJuly 30, 2012 at 12:35 PM

    Anxiety does tend to "color" our experiences, doesn't it? I can relate to this.

    ReplyDelete

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