**TL:DR: Anxiety haze keeps making me waste valuable time I could have spent doing things that make me actually happy -- years later I realized that in addition to a lot of circumstances beyond my control (family, money, etc), anxiety ruined my youth .** 

**TL:DR 2: Try to stop and think about what around you could bring you joy that you're not letting into your life** 

The latest layer of my anxiety that I'm trying to internalize and conquer is missing out on simple things in life because I'm so laser focused on what's directly in front of me + lack of energy. 

About a decade ago I moved states -- at that point my anxiety was completely diagnosed. 

Recently on several trips home I kind of feel like a dumbass. There was so many things I could have done as a kid, as a young adult, that I didn't even think about doing because I was so hyper vigilant/in my lane. 

My grandparents used to watch me after school. They were kind of nasty and didn't have any hobbies other than cleaning. I was miserable and in retrospect, probably supercharging my anxiety. 

But then it occurred to me that they lived walking distance from a huge state park with great fishing, hiking and swimming...and I just...sat on my ass on the porch or rode my bike around in circles on the block. 

A normal kid would have fucked off to the woods, I think? 

Then when I was older I wasted all my teen years working fast food every weekend and half my weeknights because again I was so in the lane of "I have to have a job to have fun" but that's total bullshit I could have bought a used kayak working one day a week and had all the fun I wanted. 

Maybe a lot of what I was doing was just disassociating to avoid anxiety. You know, if I play this video game for 7 hours or just hyper into organizing my baseball cards I don't have to think so much. 

And I definitely still catch myself just turning off mentally and playing video games for hours, or posting way too much to Reddit to distract myself -- instead of getting my ass out of the house to something fulfilling. 

I'm getting ready to relocate again -- and I find I'm facing a similar feeling that I didn't take advantage of all the benefits where I live now. Although I think these days in my middle aged years its more lack of energy then being too laser focused to think of what else I could be doing 

I do still catch myself in anxiety haze at work, missing obvious things -- and that's really annoying and frustrating. 

IDK if any of this makes sense.