Long Term Vision, Long Term Anxiety

 I genuinely lose it at least once a day thinking about what the post-COVID world looks like. Will the “path of least resistance” mean that people continue to stay home and do only “virtual” socialization from their couch? Will having IRL gatherings remain or become some sort of culture war divide between “nasty germ spreaders” and the “virtuous virtual”? Will the Amazons of the world see an even greater bonanza and use their economic dominance to push us into virtual work and schooling, a world where they own the entirety of the infrastructure and we are hardly if even face-to-face with a soul? Will we shrug our shoulders at the warnings about screen time and the effects increasingly prevalent alienation and isolation has wreaked on our world pre-COVID, creating an epidemic of despair, depression, and suicide? 

I have a real problem with long-term anxiety like this. Short term anxieties are no problem. I can do something to fix those. Long-term ones that we know nothing about? My mind runs wild. I’ll feel like I’m helping people with warnings, but sometimes, like with the present COVID situation, I don’t know that it helps a lot of people, especially those trying to navigate schooling for their children without feeling inadequate or conflicted about these very issues.

This type of anxiety is both my greatest asset and curse, in that it sparks me into vigorous immediate action (see work piling up in front of you? I’ll attack it vigorously) but also paralyzes me (it’s impossible for me to make decisions with long-term implications that don’t end up feeling impulsive and short-sighted). But it can also be beneficial in that it provides vision in projects. The bad anxiety is probably how I’ve gotten assigned some of my best projects: my willingness to look long-term and attack potential threats.

I’m just not sure how to maximize the assets of “long term vision” counter to the liabilities of “long term anxiety.”