Of all of human’s gifts, one that never fails to amaze me is our capacity for worry and anxiety. Give us anything—good, bad, or neutral—and we can construct a disaster out of it. Our efforts are going to fail, things we love will disappear, people we love will get hurt, strangers will taunt us, no one will like us. I suppose there’s a great creativity to it, but the drift toward the disaster mindset is truly annoying.

I am currently editing an anthology. I’m reading through the submissions and in the quiet, all kinds of disastrous thinking blooms. What if we can’t find the right balance of work? What if nothing is wow? What if my anthology is the worst of all the anthologies out there? What if….

And we do that with everything. EVERYTHING. So managing mental disasters is a huge part of my coping strategies and my writer’s survival kit.

Step 1: Put it in perspective. It’s not real. Every disaster you are imagining is a future thought. It is not happening in the moment. What’s happening in the moment is the work and the work needs focus and attention.

Step 2: Understand the cost. If I invest in the disaster thinking then I do not proceed with my work. What I put my attention on grows. So if I give more life to the disaster thinking then I am literally funneling my creative energies into anxiety and negative possibility. I’ve traded in productivity for mental glitches.

Step 3: Understand the improbability. No one can avoid disaster, but we can’t predict it either. Bad things will happen to us for sure, but many times it’ll be something we didn’t see coming. Additionally, there is nothing I can do to avoid criticism and failure. If I think I can chase perfection to avoid a bad outcome, I am fooling myself.

Step 4: Embrace the necessity of being less than. There’s a saying I use to keep myself going: “There’s always going to be somebody who is better than you at something and worse than you at something. Always.” I tell myself this so I don’t obsess on being the best. It’s impossible and it’s contextual, so I can only do my best.

These days I am courting durability. I don’t have to have the answers, but I do require myself to keep moving forward, to keep experimenting and creating and producing. Fragility does not support creative dreams and efforts. Learning to sit with vulnerability takes strength. It takes guts to say, I’m going to make this thing regardless. It might not be perfect. It might have typos. I might only sell 2 or 10. I might not get it published. It might get published, then ignored, but ultimately it’s not about the thing. It’s about me and you. It’s about our efforts and our expression. It’s about our growth and investing the time and work into developing our art, our visions, and our gifts. That is what we are here for. That’s how we honor our humanity.