Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This is a new sentence I’ve come up with recently, and I’ve been trying it out as a motivational tool.

Not only does it seem to make sense to me, but it contextualizes some of my everyday hesitations in a way that compels me to overcome them.

Anxiety is no fun. Some feel more of it than others for a lot of different reasons. Some of those reasons make more sense than others. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what the reasons are because anxiety doesn’t seem to need a particularly good reason to have an effect on you.

Do you ever get anxious about meeting new people? Journalists do it just about every day. Their stories are built off of the stories told by all of the people they go out and meet. Most people are happy to share their stories, but any number of reasons can make getting those stories difficult or impossible, whether it’s scheduling conflicts or location or life circumstances. That’s the nature of the journalism business.

Planning and calling early help, but never completely eliminate the risk.

This is something a journalist might have anxieties about. Some might stress over it more than others. I wonder if I do? Every call, every email, every meeting brings with it anxiety.

I think the natural inclination is to try to avoid anxiety, but you’re never going to avoid it completely. Anxiety is a message you send yourself to let you know something is important. It’s a message that you should care about what’s about to happen. There are lots of things to care about, and that means there are lots of things to be anxious about. That is life.

I also like the idea that nothing worth having comes easy or cheaply. Effort is integral for each worthwhile endeavor undertaken.

It’s through this lens that I figured I’d try to think about anxiety. It’s going to happen anyway, and it will usually come with all of the important events and struggles in life. This isn’t something to be avoided — and I don’t think it can be avoided — so it must be endured. Like effort, anxiety itself comes with actions that are worthwhile.

It’s a tax, a fee, a price to pay for every worthwhile act. It may not be pleasant, but it’s necessary. Nothing worthwhile is gained without caring about it first.

No, I’m not going to want to pay that anxiety price. I want to pay it about as much as I want to pay taxes. But April 15 comes every year just the same, and moving forward or getting things done is going to require pushing through my anxieties.

Once it’s paid, you may find you get what you paid for, like a change in circumstance, or an accomplishment, or even just a story to publish.

Sometimes those prices can seem too high. I know I’ve felt that way lots of times. If that seems like the case, then it’s OK to find help, because you may also find that the anxiety price isn’t quite as high as you thought.

Pay it anyway. It’s worth it.

Brad Robichaux is a reporter for The Port Arthur News. He can be reached at brad.robichaux@panews.com.