Hemingway On Worry

Worry destroys the ability to write... [it] attacks your subconscious and destroys your reserves.

                              -- Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review, Spring 1958

Worry, and it's synonym anxiety, is something I know a lot about. I come from a family of worriers and bad-sleeping, anxiety prone people. Even the littlest concern or hitch in the day can send a ripple of worry down the spine and, as Hemingway said, attack the subconscious.

The problem is, we can't remove all of the triggers of worry and anxiety from our lives. I am going to have pressures on my time that are beyond my control, which make hitting a deadline difficult to impossible. I am going to have to confront certain situations and people periodically. I am going to have to make hard choices as a parent and face up t the mistakes I make, no matter how well intentioned my thinking was and is.

As I read the interview of Hemingway (HERE) I became envious of the life he led. Not because I would make the same choices as he did with regard to drinking and how he treated the people closest to him in life, but the thought of waking each morning in a beautiful, small villa near Havana and write with the morning breezes sweeping in and to do so with a sense of financial security sounds like a good way to live. He wrote standing up, so maybe that's something I could try.

I also became envious of the freedom from worry that he seemed to have, until I read the quote above. That quote, I think, shows someone well acquainted with anxiety and aware of his faults. The drinking and attitude and relative seclusion he sought make a lot more sense in that context.

So, as a writer, how do I deal with my own worries and anxiety? It's a management problem. Learning to manage the feelings as they flame up and tamp them down again without repressing them is a trick. It takes work, but there are tools and plenty of places to go find them.

Two sources of information that help are elephantjournal.com and rebellesociety.com. They are filled with good information on how to manage emotions so they don't get the best of you.

It is true, worry and anxiety eat at the subconscious, but cats also help.