A Song for Winter: Journal from the author

I have high levels of social anxiety all the time. For some reason, I’m innear-constantt fear that I will do or say something that will offend or disappoint someone. So in most social situations, I am uncomfortable and withdrawn. I’ve tried anxiety medications but they just leave me feeling like I am swimming in pudding and unable to focus correctly on any tasks. When my anxiety gets the better of me I start writing on scraps of paper or in my head. The worse the anxiety attack, the darker and more violent the writings become. Most of the time these darker writings get discarded but sometimes they get rewritten into a more usable form. There is an ideal final battle for my story that I’ve had in my head for some time now and every time my anxiety starts acting up I end up adding more and more epic set pieces to the fight. At first, I was terrified to even post on Paperdemon but I realized as long as I included the prompts somehow I could write whatever I wanted even then I was afraid people would judge me harshly because my writing isn’t the best. But as the story evolved I realized what really mattered was what I thought of it so I started to have fun. Creative writing helps me weaponize my anxiety into a more or less better form.