How to deal with anxiety (not like this)

Everyone is busy right? You are, your friends are, your family members are, all of us have less time available to us than we would like. Even if you or someone you know is currently out of employment and looking for a job right now, that kind of stress might not be the same, but it’s not exactly granting them a lot of free time either, especially if you wouldn’ be able to finance the available extra time anyway. No matter how I position myself in any of these scenarios, I can’t see an angle where anxiety isn’t one of the biggest issues I would be dealing with. Then, why would I choose to work a side job? Wouldn’t that make things even worse?

NOTE: While this series is about my mental health and how I am trying to deal with my anxiety issues. NOTHING in here should be taken as advice or copied. If you struggle with anxiety, or with your mental health in general, go talk to a professional!

If you have followed my previous entries about this subject, please be aware that I will be repeating quite a few points in here. So about myself, I work a full time job, as does my wife. We, well, currently, because who knows, nothing is guaranteed, right? But right now, we are not financially burdened in any significant way, let’s go with that, we are doing alright, is what I am trying to say. Could we do with more money? Yes, but I don’t think it matters how much money you actually have to be honest, you could always do with more money, just the reason for wanting it changes. So with that in mind, we circle back to the same question. Why did I decide to work a side job?

Mental health is the answer. Here is a fun fact, as the lockdowns started to happen in 2020 and all the way through the end of 2021 I started feeling a lot better. There are actually tons of reasons for that, the easiest ones to identify were that a lot of the things that I absolutely hated doing, they just kind of disappeared. Like going into the office for example. I am not talking about doing my job, no, I mean actually going there. I got about 150% to 200% more done per day, meaning I was way more productive working from home, whilst at the same time having about two extra hours available to me, as there was no commute, no wasting time on going to get lunch and let’s face it no disruptors like, having to pretend to be nice to people I didn’t care about talking to in the first place, as awful as that might sound. The point is that just with this little adjustment, that I still had the people I liked at work to talk to, be it through Teams, or the occasional team lunch, everything I hated about the working environment was gone, only the positive things remained. When I went shopping, now that we had to wear masks and people had to maintain their distance in queues, I felt a lot more comfortable being outside as well weirdly enough. This list of these things could go on for quite a while, but to actually summarise what happened to me, is that my anxiety hit an all time low during that time. Low being a positive thing here.

At the time I wasn’t quite aware of it though. It’s the same as when you are losing weight, because you are seeing yourself every day. So small changes that happen over longer periods of time, you don’t really see them, other people will. I only realised that things had been better, when they were deteriorating again, at an accelerated pace. Which was around the summer of 2022. That’s when I actually started thinking about things, for how long this had been going on and why it’s so much worse now. Thinking back, I had always struggled with anxiety, but usually there were layers on top of it, that I could, for a lack of a better word, blame for how I am feeling. The problem with that was and again I didn’t actually see that at the time, but as one layer was peeled off, I would just shift the blame for that feeling onto another one, even though nothing had actually changed about that feeling. So clearly, these two scapegoats, the first that I blamed initially and is now resolved, as well as the new issue that I am blaming now, fundamentally had nothing to do with this feeling of anxiety. Why did I actually feel better in 2020 and 2021 even though there were some really stressful periods of having to find a new flat as soon as possible as well? Which would be a very valid reason to feel anxious. Two things really stood out to me when I started putting things into perspective. The first one I actually got to spend a lot more time with my better half and I am not talking about anything special in particular here, but just having the time available to be with each other. The second one was that I had to choose how to spend my free time in general, being that all entertainment options outside weren’t available. It just so happens that entertainment for me means learning or trying new things. I had bought Hitbox just before the pandemic hit, I was educating myself on encoding differences between recording and streaming, I put together a workout plan to stick to at home as I could no longer go to the gym, I changed my diet to a 100% plant based one, I quit smoking and more. There were a lot of things that kept me busy and happy during that time and again being able to spend more time with my partner than before, it all kind of made it better than the time before this.

I am still living happily on a plant based diet, I still don’t smoke, I still play fighting games on Hitbox, I still work out frequently, just at the gym again, however one thing that moved away was the available time with my significant other, as she’s working a full time job as well now, without the option of working from home. Just to be clear I am not trying to shift the blame on her now, that’s not where this is headed, this was just my assessment of what is missing now. My solution to this however was, whilst she’s not here, that I should do something. It just so happened that around that time I also learned that mini-jobs in Germany are tax free, even when you’re working a full-time job already. That is something I didn’t know and also probably wouldn’t even have cared about earlier on. While I wasn’t too picky about what kind of job I’d be doing, I heavily focused on cafés, especially around my local area. I love black coffee and at a café I would have the best chances of learning more about it. Roasting processes, flavour profiles, ground types, different styles of preparing the grounds and so on. Luckily enough, I actually got one. I started in the middle of September and now at the end of November, I’ve been working pretty much every weekend at the café.

The actual job itself is very simple of course. The most challenging part is consulting people on what beans might best suit their palates for their preferred methods of preparing their coffee, you know like a hand filter, a french press, a standard filtered coffee machine or my preference an automatic coffee machine. But the point is, bar a single person, I really enjoy working with the people there and the work itself is oddly satisfying too. Granted I only do that on weekends and it’s essentially a hobby that I get compensated for, and the tips also shouldn’t be scoffed at. If it was my full time job I might not be as giddy about it. However, since about mid October I didn’t really have any overbearing instances of crippling anxiety. It’s not gone, don’t get me wrong, but just being able to fill out my time with something I enjoy doing, and this is important, something that doesn’t require me to motivate myself first into doing it, has made a world of a difference. I still make sure to take breaks, to spend as much time with my spouse as possible and to actually enjoy life. I think mid March would be a good time to update on this and to see if things have been getting better, stayed the same or got worse again. At least for now though, I feel very content with the progress I have made.

Again though, this is neither advice nor something I would want you to copy or emulate. I just wanted to talk about it. Just as with anything mental health related, go talk to a professional. Don’t take the processes of other people on- or offline as something to apply to yourself. People’s minds are unique, talk to someone qualified to find a solution bespoke to you. See you next time.