#16: The Anxiety of Getting Wins From The Ground Up
How I get anxiety, deal with anxiety, and use anxiety to my advantage

It’s been a few months since my last check in. How’s life? How’s the significant other and the kids? How’ve I been doing? Oh, great! Well, great isn’t necessarily the word that defines it. I’d moreso say, I’m happy but nervous. Starting something from the ground up gives you this freeing feeling that you can call your shots, and see plans through your way. For me, there’s nothing better. It beats the hell out of playing politics to try and get your ideas across. But with that, comes the anxiety of knowing that I could fuck up my entire life at any moment.
I mean, I’m not scared of failure. I’m not religious or anything, but I’m a believer that everything ends up ok in the end. I also learned that everything except death is reversible. Folks like Chris Sacca are idols to me. He was millions in debt, and finessed his way into being a multi-billionaire venture capital investor. But I’m not there yet, so it’s hard not to look at the word and feel stressed out from time to time.

The base of it for me comes from this weird feeling of FOMO, when it comes to work. The idea that I’m not working 24/7 right now has me feeling like anxious as fuck. Sometimes I feel like I need to be doing stuff, and have no clue what to do. It’s so real, that I’m typing this on Saturday or labor day weekend, after working since 7a EST. Where does this come from? No clue. Probably societies pressure on work, or some deep seeded bullshit. I couldn’t tell you, but it’s there.
It’s actually been there since I was in college. I used to sit at home and comb through the contacts on different blogs, and of promoters attached to records on Digiwaxx. I’d email everyone at random, offering my services as an intern. the entire time, it was suffocating. Years later, I felt that way when working at HotNewHipHop. I wanted to do so much more than I was allowed to, and I spent hours stressing myself out. My friend Benner used to joke that I’d call him once a month with my bullshit. After that, I was nervous about missing out on growing within a large company (see the hate for politics in paragraph one). Now, it’s all about missing out on growing a small company to a large one.

Anxiety has always been a fuel for me. A way to get up and go. Instead of sitting with it, I let it stress me out and drive me to get something done. Having studied anxiety a bit, it’s not actually the healthiest way to deal with it. See, anxiety has both a mental and physical reaction. You start by making some shit up in your head, and then it cycles to real physical symptoms that legitimize your fears, and then it cycles back to your brain, and down the rabbit hole you go. The idea of feeding into my anxiety to motivate me, is me just going down the rabbit hole. BUT it’s worked for me up until this point.
So here I am, on a Saturday, on a holiday weekend, shooting off emails and notes to people that won’t reply to me till Tuesday. The pressure is on to get some real wins on the board. Same Plate needs to break artists, differentiate ourselves amongst the pack, and build a real brand in the same time. I’m focused. I’m determined. I’m motivated and hyped. I’m just anxious as hell along with it. One day, when I’m old and grey, I’ll have hopefully set myself up to feel less “life or death” about things. Until then, I’ll be here getting to work.
(NOTE: With everything said here, if you feel anxious about something and wanna break, I’m here for you. Just hit me on some type of way that you have contact with me.)
