you can't live with it, you can't live without it.

i want to talk about anxiety.

first, a story. i was standing on the subway yesterday, and there was this guy reading an article. he was clearly a grad student. and he looked stressed! and i thought to myself, man, you shouldn't be stressed -- you've got years in which to write your dissertation, you've got tons of autonomy, you do very rewarding work....you're not facing, for instance, a ride on the law school's roller coaster.(The terrifying highs and lows of the Brutal Curve! Not for the faint-hearted!)

but of course, when i was a grad student, i stressed like that too. it now seems stupid to me that i was stressed -- that i beat myself up about not working when i felt like i "should," and all that. but while law school's lack of autonomy sucks, at least you know when work is over! total freedom, which is what grad students, writers, artists, etc, enjoy, comes with its own difficulties.

so while it seems ideal, in some ways it's really not. that kind of lifestyle may require MORE, not LESS, discipline -- if you're going to do it happily. (most people don't do it happily. they stress constantly, and use that stress to convince themselves to eke out some small portion of work. sound familiar?)

if you want to live happily with a freelance sort of life, you somehow have to motivate yourself for some limited period of time, and then let go, so that you can SAVOR all the extra time you have. this is so hard to do, though. is it possible? is it possible to be motivated for a brief time, and then to truly relax? is there any difference between motivation and anxiety? i have friends who are pretty much free from anxiety -- most of them live in the South. and friends who are constantly anxious -- most of them are in law school. very few strike that happy, productive balance...

charlie doesn't know if this balance is merely a dream. he himself exists somewhere in between anxiety and non-anxiety. perhaps we humans are indeed merely fated to be enslaved by our desires, our fears, our anxieties, our feelings -- always tossed hither and thither by the wind...