Digest 20260205: Post-Anxiety Highs + an apropos WIP

I am emerging from 10 days in an anxiety hole. With the self-awareness of one long used to an anxious brain, I lost the plot, lost a lot of sleep and spent most of the week in a fog of fatigue, dread, and palpitations with just a spot of nausea to top it off once I got to day four of broken sleep.

The first trigger for all this was getting a work invite to attend a customer’s conference down in London. This was actually a very cool treat and kind of a reward for my hard work. I was excited about this because it’s extremely rare that we are given this sort of opportunity. But… Then the flood of anxieties…

• I’ve not been to London alone since 2019. London is busy and scary, and people are rude there.
• I’ve never been to a conference as an attendee before, and I don’t know what is expected of me.
• How will I talk to people when I don’t have the same professional background and experience? (As a failed professional in a different sector)
• I’ll feel like an imposter, and people will think I am one, and I’ll be a bad representation of the company.

I was so worked up with these worries, and a multitude more than the above that I won’t bore you with, so that by the time my husband dropped me off at the train station, I was a kind word away from bursting into tears because I just was so fucking exhausted by myself.

And you’ll be shocked to know, it was all more than fine and actually kind of great. After all, getting to London is as simple as taking a train, and then Google Maps makes taking the tube (almost) foolproof, as did travelling well out of rush hour.

2 hours 30 mins after I fought back tears getting out of the Ioniq 5, I was looking at a lit-up London Eye, and 15 mins after that, tucked into my Premier Inn bed, watching some Gogglebox with a cup of UHT milk tea.

The conference the next day was also great. It was genuinely interesting, I met customers I’d done work for, I learned about fascinating jobs in the sector I didn’t know existed, and I saw a few current and ex-colleagues in person, which is itself a rare treat because most of us are WFH. Incredibly, I only felt social anxiety twinges instead of full brain shutdown panic!

My journey back across London suddenly felt like no big deal, I’d even say I enjoyed it?! I zipped across the tube and strolled with purpose across St Pancras like a native.

I ate sushi on a train station bench using chopsticks like a true cosmopolitan.

Who was that terrified creature of 24 hours ago? Would she recognise this confident, professional adult who can so casually pick up a California roll while she waits for her train?

Maybe next time I have to go to London alone, I can remember Train Station Chopsticks Alice exists within me, and save myself some anguish.

An appropriate WIP

I wanted to do a Work In Progress Wednesday, as suggested by Nic, but I didn’t get to it yesterday, and now it’s Thursday… I’m still counting it.

One of the triggers for a sleepless night in the ~Lost 10 Days~ was my new weekly anxiety hangover routine, also known as – the craft meet up I actually finally started!

There are 3 of us, and we’ve only met twice, so early days of striking the social balance and figuring out personalities. This means for a while I’m basically guaranteed a bad night’s sleep on this night every week while my brain replays over everything I said and every reaction!

Hopefully, eventually, I’ll build up a tolerance/actually make friends.

I have been making some decent progress on my latest embroidery piece. The new pub I use for my new meet-up has much better lighting than the one my old knitting group used.

Telly

• Watched Pluribus, and it was fine. It didn’t particularly excite me, which is surprising because on paper it’s exactly the kind of thing I should love. It could just be that I found Carol too frustrating, and you’re stuck with her most of the time. I have been thinking about what I might do if I were in her position. That could be a fun blog post I’ll probably never get around to writing.
• Watched Peacemaker season 1. I did enjoy it in the end because Peacemaker and Vigilante made me laugh. I heard the second season isn’t as good. It inspired a rewatch of the James Gunn Suicide Squad, which is still a great movie.
• We started Wonder Man. Only a few episodes in, but it’s good so far, really annoying time we get to see Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery is the best. We rewatched Shang-Chi recently, too, and I’d forgotten he was in that!
• Fallout season 2 is finished, and I’m sad. I love this show. The wait for season 3 is going to feel very long! Last weekend, I got all the games in the Steam Sale, so I very well might play them all from the start. I really want to learn all the lore because I only really played Fallout 4 myself and know bits of New Vegas from watching my brother play.
• I’ve also been watching the new season of High Potential, which is still enjoyabl,e if every episode is marred by how annoying the new captain is. He’s so obviously up to something and inserts himself into everything. They’ve dragged out the reveal too long.
• Traitors (UK) series 4 was great and had a satisfying finale, even if not the outcome I wanted!

What else?

• Currently back to reading White Noise by Don DeLillo, which is great, but also with how my last week went, my brain hasn’t been at full capacity. I’m listening to The Wee Free Men by Sir Terry Pratchett (got to start making progress on my Law of Fives challenge!).
• On this note, every day I learn new things that my Kindle can do now that it’s jailbroken. You do not understand how much easier it is to highlight passages with KOReader compared to the intense, at times rage-inducing, frustrating experience with the native Kindle reader!! Life-changing.
• I’ve been enjoying having a journal again and using pen and paper. During the aforementioned anxiety pit, I used brain dumping and mind mapping techniques to try to get some of it out. It helps a bit, even if just temporarily. I currently have my journal, my ‘thinking book’ (an old, barely used notebook) and my ‘learning book’, where I make notes on articles and things.
  • The drawback to this approach is that it makes it a lot easier for the cat to get in the way. As you can see in my featured image.
• I read Tracy’s post about ‘sidenotes’ this morning, and I cannot tell you the strength of will it took to finish this post instead of going off on a side quest to implement this immediately on the blog. Still might… but I have other things I also want to do with my precious time.
• I bought The Artist’s Way on a whim at some point in the haze of ~~~The Lost 10 Days~~~ which broke my ‘stop buying self-help books FFS’ rule… people really go on about this book. I hope it’s not shit.
• I forgot to include a movement section, but rest assured, I am on it with the running (I can nearly run for 15 minutes without stopping!), and I even did a couple of weeks of strength training. I even went running on a day when I was exhausted – just to get out and try it, and because I thought it might shake off some anxiety hormones – and I really was surprised with how much I managed to do. Progress is progress, even when it’s super slow; one day, you suddenly notice the difference!