The past several years have been tough. I’ve been feeling stagnant. Stuck. But at the same time, it feels like my life is rushing past me. I’m getting old. But I still feel like a little kid who’s being left behind.
My mind is frozen to the ground while my body is dragged down the current.
I am joyless.
I’m scared to count the years that I’ve been feeling like this. I have been feeling like this since before 2021. Since before Covid, if I’m being honest. And before I think about it too much, maybe for most of my life.
I’m scared to learn just how long I’ve been feeling like my life is both stagnant and slipping through my fingers like running water.
I started this blog in 2021. I posted two entries: One about quitting my job and the second about recovering from burnout.
Since then, I’ve posted a few more entries about my bookish endeavors, primarily my writing and reading.
I have promptly deleted them since then.
They weren’t perfect.
The only other two posts are not perfect either, but they are honest. So I’m leaving them up for the world to see—for all the two of us to see.
I was unemployed when I wrote the last two posts. I was very burnt out and very depressed. Not to mention, I was a nervous, wrecking anxiety ball.
But I survived.
I got a job. A good one. I worked hard. I got promoted to a better job. Then I got another job with better pay. Good benefits.
The job is not hard. But the volume is suffocating.
It is also not really stimulating enough.
I’m bored. I love most of my coworkers—others, not so much. But all in all, it’s a good, stable job. I’m very lucky.
For the past several years, I have been working my 9-5. Every day I go in, deal with the same nonsense, and then finally go home where I spend most of my evenings doing meaningless things.
I want clarify: My home life is good. I have no complaints about my home life. My fiancé and I live in a good neighborhood and we travel every once in a while. Life is good. I do have joy in my home life.
But professionally? I’m depressed.
I need to find joy with what I do for work.
Recently I’ve been thinking about where I was ten years ago.
Ten years ago, I was desperate to have what I have now: a loving partner, a stable office job, an apartment in a good neighborhood, and travel opportunities.
But, are we human if we’re ever satisfied?
I lost something along the way.
It might have been several somethings.
Four and a half years ago, I was depressed and burnt out. I was anxious and volatile. I was easily irritated and annoyed. I couldn’t concentrate. I was fighting for my life.
If I’m being honest, I still suffer from that, but far less. I’m less burnt out. I’m less depressed. I’m less anxious. I don’t get so easily irritated or annoyed. I have more grace for myself and others.
I’ve put in the work these past years.
It’s not the same anymore. It’s better.
I’m better.
Then why do I feel like there’s something missing?
I am hollowed.
It’s like a part of me disintegrated along the way.
Don’t get me wrong. I am happy with the progress that I’ve made these past several years.
And to further clarify, I wasn’t happy with my professional life ten years ago (or four years ago for that matter).
I jumped from job to job and only made a few cents above minimum wage. I could barely pay for anything.
I quit my first office job because it was a toxic work environment.
But ten years ago, I had something else outside of work that made me happy: my writing.
I experienced joy when writing.
My writing wasn’t perfect. I have never finished a novel. It needed a lot of editing and rewriting. I’d be embarrassed to publish anything without a professional green-lighting it.
But my writing was consistent.
And most importantly, my love for it was never-wavering. I found so much joy just writing every day.
I would spend hours writing. Occasionally, I would hit over ten thousand words in a day. It was magical.
But now? Now it’s like we’re exes trying to make it work for the kids, and it’s just not working the way it’s supposed to be.
I loved writing. I loved coming up with stories and characters. I loved coming up with pieces of dialogue that I didn’t know exactly what story they were telling, but I knew they had the heart of one. I loved staying up late at night to write as much as I could.
But not anymore.
Everything’s gray with my writing.
There are so many times when I’ve given up on my writing only to pick it up again.
Again and again. A never-ending cycle that has been a cause of both frustration and hope.
And here I am again: At the brink of cautious hope.
But still, my writing feels diluted from any emotion. It’s not joyful anymore.
How do I go back to joy?
Sadly, I’m not sure.
I’ve tried writing a novel. Abandoned it. Picked up a different idea. Abandoned that one. Picked a different one. Abandoned it. Went back to the first. Then the third. Then a convoluted Game of Thrones style of many main characters and storylines. And I’m not even writing fantasy.
My head is a mess.
The endless doomscrolling doesn’t help. Being chronically online doesn’t help.
I need to reset.
This is a journey to find joy.
And most importantly, to reconnect with myself. Like I said in my previous post, I need to be human first, and then be myself.
But how do I do that?
Sadly (again), I’m not sure.
I overthink everything. I try to plan for everything; every scenario of me failing so that I’m prepared for it and don’t actually fail. Clearly, it’s not working out.
So I’m jumping before I’m ready.
Yes, I’m trying not to panic. I have a plan, albeit a haphazard one. But it’s a plan that starts with three things.
The first is to spend less time on my phone.
I know. I also think it sounds impossible.
But maybe it’s not.
I have deleted my social media from my phone. It’s only been a couple of weeks since this drastic action but I already feel a difference.
I realized that since the explosion of short-form content, most of my attention has gone to Instagram or TikTok. I have spent hours and hours scrolling through videos.
I would come home after work, and promptly spend hours on the couch scrolling through social media.
But not anymore. I am deleting the social media from my phone.
The second thing I deleted from my phone? Video games.
Video games on my phone were, if I’m being honest, just as much as a time waster as social media.
And if I’m being completely honest, it has been a lot harder to forget about the video games.
I would spend so much time listening to music and playing games on my phone. It was my favorite past time. I enjoyed it more than the social media sometimes.
But it’s now in the past.
I have deleted all games from my phone.
The second part of my plan is journaling.
They say that journaling helps us a lot. It serves many purposes—clearing our minds, reducing stress and anxiety, manifesting, documenting our lives, and so many other benefits.
I used to journal a lot when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. I have a theory that journaling helped me a lot more than I gave it credit. Is it a coincidence that I was enamored with writing at the time when I was journaling?
I’m about to find out.
My plan is to journal for at least ten minutes every day.
The third thing is the scariest one of all. It’s the one that has me shaking and wanting to run and hide away. It’s the one that is giving me anxiety.
But it’s the one that I’m doing right now so I guess I’m both a coward and a courageous fool.
The third part of my plan is content creation: this blog (and Substack) and my YouTube channel.
I am so scared.
Scared of people at work finding out. Scared of people making fun of me. Scared of people hating me.
But I’m also scared to keep living like this.
I’m scared to take the risk, but it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for so many years. I owe it to myself to try it and be consistent.
I need to be creative. Stimulated.
Otherwise, my hollowed body won’t heal.
And that is scarier than people finding out about my content creation and making fun of me.
I want to look back in ten years from now and be proud of myself for not letting others dictate what my life should be like.
But most importantly, I want my body and my mind to heal.
I want my soul to fill up my hollowed body.
I want to be joyous.
This is the beginning of that journey.
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