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Sometimes I ask myself what I'm so afraid of. And I realize it's failure: not living up to my potential, disappointing those who believed in me, confirming those who never did. And that's a hard fear to have in the academy, because our "success" is alway so conditional.
The problem is that so much of our success is literally dependent on others especially getting into grad school, getting a job, then getting tenure. And all the stuff along the way too: getting published, getting grants, getting cited. It can feel totally out of your own control.
That's part of why I like hobbies where I feel like I can control things or at least can control a lot of it: baking, learning language, exercise. And it's also why I try to have a spiritual practice of getting better at non-attachment and gratitude. But easier tweeted than done.
And to control my anxiety as much as anything else, I try to emphasize what's good *right now* rather than the validation I might get later from someone else. The paper I'm working on today is very cool for example. I hope it gets published well! But that's not all that matters.
For me, it's most important to try to be the kind of person I admire (obviously I fail constantly) and to do the kind of work I admire (same) and then respond to the world in ways I admire (also same). It's Aristotelian/stoic, in a way. And then the world falls as it does.
There's a similar logic in Dewey which I really admire, which is that I need to be able to change any of my habits when I realize they're not working, but I also need to be able to find joy and meaning in my habits right now as they are, not just for what others can say about me.
