Inside My Mind at 10 PM

A real-time wrestling with the rigid blueprints I designed for myself

Learning to live in the tension of anxious contentment.

I feel so disorganized lately. When I began this publication, I spent hours setting it up, researching all things Substack, reading, commenting, and writing. So much writing. Enough that I had enough content to schedule out two months. And that is exactly what I did. By the end of February, I actually had posts scheduled out into May! But after two months I simply felt like I was being inauthentic. Well, that’s not totally true. I felt like I was watering myself down. Making myself small so that I could be consumable by the masses.

It unsettled me.

So I made a change. I gave myself less structure in making Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays all connect and then also doing a connect podcast. It was too much. Posting that often wasn’t—but putting the pressure on myself to make everything cohesive from week to week prevented me from truly following the prompting of God. I kept having these ideas and things I knew I needed to write about, but because weeks scheduled out, it would be months before that writing made its way to you. And something about that also unsettled me. It occurred to me that in scheduling everyting out to maintain perfect control, I was really limiting the movement of the Holy Spirit. There was nothing innately wrong with the things I had scheduled, and they were things I felt were important to share, but they were only tiny glimpses of who I really am.

Even more recently, I gave myself permission to not be so structured on Mondays in The Undoing. I still think it is important to continue the process of undoing all the unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors, certainly. I will still post those from time to time. But I really wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted. And I know, I know. It’s my Substack and I can say and do whatever I want. That is true, but even in that, I had set up these odd rules for myself. What I could and couldn’t do. What I needed to say vs. what I couldn’t openly say. How much I would share. I put myself in a box that I fought so hard to break out of, and again, I was unsettled by the pressure I was putting on myself. It’s what I do. High expectations and intense pressure to perform are still hallmarks of the decisions I make. This is built so deeply into the blueprint of who I am that it is sometimes difficult to pull myself out of that thinking.

And it’s nearly 10PM on a Tuesday night, and the time is pressing down on me. I post an essay on Wednesday, and I haven’t written one. I have felt trapped within my own mind and body, as the pressure mounts to get an essay in because I promised an essay on Wednesdays. But this is what it is going to look like sometimes. Me in real time stressing about rules I made up for myself. And then being disappointed in myself for not meeting my own expectations. No one told me I had to do an essay every Wednesday. It is just the challenge I gave to myself. To keep myself actively writing, actively healing, actively facing the hard things. It wasn’t a bad goal, but the fact that I am feeling very real anxiety because I wasn’t prepared already with the essay is a problem. And it is one that I am aware of and actively trying to correct.

So you still get an essay in the end. I suppose—as long as anyone is willing to call this an essay. But what it actually is appears to be simply a look inside my mind. A real-time wrestling that I am doing over my own imaginary rules. I am calmed by rules to the same degree I can get compeltely disrupted by the very same rules. It is the reality of living inside my brain.

I am in a holding pattern right now. I’m in a very real burnout, unsure of the full extent or the why yet, and I’m utterly exhausted. It takes everything within me to get out of bed in the morning. I muster more energy to log in and begin work. I’m lucky if I have the energy to eat breakfast. I’m certainly not brushing my teeth most days. Waiting is so very difficult. It could be tomorrow or six weeks from now before I get the results of my auDHD evaluation. Until then, I’m in this state of anxious contentment. That may not be a real thing, or make any sense to you, but it 100% tracks in my brain. I’m anxious because I want to know if there is a neurological explanation for all the quirks and patterns of behavior I have. I’m anxious because what does it mean if I’m not autistic or I don’t have ADHD? Or both. But I am content because God has taught me how to wait. And He has asked me to wait through much more difficult seasons, and He has taught me what it looks like to depend on Him in that waiting. Two things can be true at the same time. This is the tension that I am learning to accept.

Jamie

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