I’m in my own head.. A LOT. Between general overthinking, financial hustle/optimization patterns, and health anxiety… I’m always caught up on something deep within the depths of my brain.
If you’ve ever dealt with anxiety, paranoia, or straight up fits of panic, you know what I’m talking about.
It can be difficult to keep these thoughts in your head for an extended period of time. Thankfully, I have outlets that help me push through the noise – but still, the noise always remains.
I’ve often thought about coming up with ways to visualize these patterns of anxiety. You know, some way to let these thoughts live outside my head. After all, there’s a lot going on inside that thing!
I’m not the best artist, but I enjoy drawing. I’ve dabbled here and there, often drawing characters from some of the eccentric stories I create. These characters typically revolve around crazy every-day people who are put into weird situations. Funny and odd, sure, but difficult to create a reoccurring theme around. And frankly, people would probably think these characters are just fucking weird!
One night, after a long day of internalizing one of my worries, I sat down in my recliner and took out my legal pad.
At first, I journaled – something that I do fairly often to get my thoughts down on paper – and to hopefully make sense of my anxieties.
After writing my usual notes, for some reason I decided to start sketching.
I thought about my brain, and how it’s practically strangling itself every time I begin ruminating on my so called “worry of the day.”
The sketch turned into this little brain character – strangling himself with his own limbs. I liked it.
For the first time, I could visualize exactly how I was feeling on the inside. I could picture my brain – MY crazy brain – constantly battling itself.
Those first few sketches weren’t great, but they were a start.
I took a photo with my iPhone, placed them on Canva, and then printed out each version of my character. I pinned that paper to my wall in my apartment and looked at it every day for a few weeks. In the evenings, I would refine the brain character, putting him in different situations, cleaning up his look, and just having fun with him.
Out of all of the things I’ve drawn in the past – other characters and such – I’ve never loved drawing something as much as my brain character. It just works for me.
From these drawings, I started thinking about how I could create a reoccurring theme with this little character.
I thought about what what it means to constantly be at battle with myself. I thought about how, despite decades of chronic worrying, I’ve persisted. I’ve thought about all of the situations, jobs, and workouts I’ve put myself through throughout the years. How even though I’ve had struggles internally, I never allowed them to change my positive trajectory. I thought about how although I complain A LOT in my head, I really don’t have any complaints. I’ve set myself up really well, and although the journey has sucked at times, I pushed through – and have become a better person because of it.
This isn’t supposed to be some cliche story about grinding it out and hustling your way to your dreams – because there’s already a lot of that bullshit online from influencers who’ve never done anything worthwhile in the first place.
This is just my version – raw and authentic. And although my journey up to this point has sucked at times, it’s what I chose to do.
And today, I’ve got No Komplaints.
– CJ
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