26 at 26: A for Anxiety
Or: Why I Never Called
Late last year, I turned 26. So, in the tradition of the great panel show QI, I will be running through an alphabetical view on 26 things in my world so far.
I can’t remember which comedian made the joke, or even the details of it. I suppose it may have been Brian Regan, since the cadence in my head seems to match his tempo. But I recall hearing a joke that built up into the laughable absurdity, the comic implausibility, of someone, in this day and age, not being much of a “phone guy”.
I am not much of a “phone guy”.
It’s not unheard of. And, being something that occasionally resembles a rational person, I think I know why it happens for me in particular. The absence of non-verbal communication, the disappointment with my own voice, the knowledge of how downright rude a phone call is. (Stephen Fry illustrates that point quite well, better than I ever could.)
So I find myself avoiding calling people as much as humanly possible. Which causes problems. I’m actually in the middle of a postal re-routing battle that might somehow be less Kafka-esque if done via phone calls. And worse, I’ve managed to refrain from making very necessary medical appointments because one must call to arrange them. So I think it’s safe to pathologize here and say I have some sort of phone anxiety.
Fun times.
Admittedly, it doesn’t actually sound like a big deal. People don’t call much anymore. I’ve convinced some friends and relatives to start using the British term for a cell phone, simply because calling it a “mobile” makes more sense than a phrase that contains “phone”, since the “phone” part is nearly never used. The phone app on my mobile has been relegated all the way to the permanent bottom bar, where it can be safely ignored while serving as a pretense that I use it. (Be honest. When using your mobile, how much attention do you actually pay to those icons, rather than the ones on the page you’re flipping to?)
But let’s not pretend that, once the phone part of the equation is removed, I’m some calm and collected lady-about-town. I’m awkward in every medium, including this one. The only times I feel comfortable are when I know, fully, what I’m talking about. And how often does anyone get that luxury?
Where this really becomes a bother, though, is when it interacts with other A-words that crop up in my life. Ambition. Assertion. Aspiration. I have more than my share of ambition brewing, but anxiety and ambition seem to be at odds with each other.
Among tech entrepreneurs, we have a world, essentially, of marketing. Volume is an asset; the winner is the one who gets in front of the most people. When I did Portland’s Startup Weekend, it seemed more emphasis was put on marketing than actually building anything. It does make practical sense — more eyeballs mean more potential dollars — but it often forces the techies to be marketers as well. I’d hate to think of how many technically or conceptually brilliant projects, things that could genuinely improve modern life, have faded into obscurity because their creators were just a little too shy.
I know that Portland has a constantly-growing, extremely eager network that, if not for anxiety, I could connect with no problem. Anyone who’s outgoing enough can. There are probably more mentors here than start-ups, and there are a lot of Portland startups. Yet the best my anxiety will let me have are a few awkward-sarcastic Twitter exchanges with Rick Turoczy. (He’s a good guy for them, to be fair.)
As I so chronically do, I’ve thought about how to potentially solve the problem. Maybe I’ll come back to it when I write about my solve-every-process-I-encounter compulsion later on. Regardless, like most problems, there’s two angles to approach the anxiety/aspiration battle from — either remove the shyness and anxiety, or remove it as a factor. I’d imagine the latter would be more effective, but I’d probably have to work out the former to have any chance at making my approach at the latter work.
Of course, I haven’t the faintest idea how I would actually do that. Maybe a regiment of meandering public posts about my general mental state would help. Who knows, worth a try.
And now, a moment of zen:
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”
