A Guide for Anxious Humans
When I was nine, I wrote a story about my friends and me fighting giant spiders while we vanquished a great evil. The reviews were spectacular: five stars from both my parents! My literary career was off to a great start.
But a single comment from one reader, a family friend, has stuck…
It seems hard to believe, but there was a brief time when I was genuinely worried that I’d failed too little.
For years, the universe has refused to respect my wishes. In particular, I often experience things which I didn’t want to happen. And it’s unclear who I’m supposed to complain to about this.
Being skilled is a curse.
I don’t mean to sound conceited. (How could I be? One of my very best features is my world-beating humility.) It’s just that…when you can do something, it’s easy to feel like you should.
Readers of How To Be Everything—Emilie Wapnicks’s guidebook to life—will be familiar with the Phoenix Approach, which describes how people occasionally reinvent themselves like the legendary phoenix rising from its own ashes.
This sounds exciting—and it is. But it turns out burning up and rebirthing out of the remains can hurt.
I feel… weird.
After years of building my knowledge of “How To Self Care,” I’ve become well-versed in identifying my needs and fixing them. I know how to rest when I’m tired, or how to channel my energy when there’s an excess.
What emotion comes to your mind when you think of 2020-21?
For me, right now, it’s joy.
As in, “does anyone remember what joy feels like?”
I’ve never felt more useless than during covid. In my country, there ws a time when every Thursday evening everybody lined up outside to applaud health workers. Quite rightly, we recognised their bravery and heroism in frightening circumstances.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t saving lives. I’ve spent the last few years writing…
When you don’t know how long an unusual situation will last, it makes sense to wait for it to blow over. But if it goes on long enough, we must adapt.
Have you ever entered the doldrums? Not the literal doldrums—the tedious places at sea where winds are few and sailors struggled to escape. I mean those times in life when nothing at all feels interesting.