Melancholy.
I’ve been feeling sort of stuck lately, trapped in a state of melancholy and I’m not a fan of it. I’ve been wanting to write so badly, yet I don’t feel like I have any ideas that are interesting enough to talk about and that feels simply pathetic. My creative factory has gone on strike or something, it’s extremely annoying if I’m being honest.
In an attempt to get myself back together I’ve forced myself to do some painting, but it didn’t affect me how I hoped it would. I’ve failed to inspire myself. Now I’m here, writing because it’s the one hobby I never want to lose. So I’ve come to talk about my feelings, I suppose, in a censored yet romanticized state because I’m a writer for goodness sake.
Often when I’ve felt this way in the past I did a little ‘self-care’ day, in the most commercial sense, and it actually did something for me. These days I just don’t even want to do that. It doesn’t help that I’m currently sick and the weather is miserable outside, however I guess that’s not completely the point. Maybe the point is that, in these moments, I see myself in a big picture sort of way… I see myself as having achieved relatively nothing compared to others my age. Once again, I feel trapped in this melancholy state of trying to figure things out, of trying to get myself perfectly together. It’s truly no fun, I wish I could be everything that I’d hoped I’d be at this point, but that’s just not the reality.
The reality is that I think sometimes we give ourselves too much credit and that fact allows us to feel safe right where we are at. We pat ourselves on the back, and baby talk ourselves into feeling better, and I’m pretty sure that that behavior becomes toxic. It ends up in us stunting our growth… we result in holding ourselves back because it’s just too hard. Read that sentence again but in baby talk.
Let’s just grow up already, I’m tired of suffocating in this stale air, aren’t you?
Time is moving much faster than you think… stop caring so much about the extremely unimportant things and take a step back to see what’s really going on. Don’t tell yourself that everything is perfectly fine and there’s no reason to even think about change right now in your life. We should work harder to motivate ourselves so that we stop getting so ‘stuck’ and frustrated by lack of whatever progress we could have made by now. I feel like I’m the worst at letting myself get comfortable, but I have found a few things that do actually help with that.
I try and surround myself with people that actually encourage me, instead of telling me what they think I want to hear, or not evening trying to pretend like they care. The friends who are real with themselves are the most encouraging friends to have, because they actually get it and that’s very, very, important. Shout out to you guys.
Make a list of short term goals. These goals can be extremely short, that’s completely fine because it gets you moving in a better direction. It’s a really good start.
Instead of an evening full of Netflix (don’t get me wrong, I love those evenings too), poke your head outside and look at the stars for a little bit. I let myself fall into the calm, lovely night, and I think of all the other people looking at the stars who are also feeling lost. It tends to make me feel less alone which is a nice bonus.
Maybe my problem is that I just need to be more consistent and truly stick with these things that keep me grounded, instead of ‘taking a day off’ from the things that aren’t even close to being a problem. Right now, I’m at a low, but I needed to write because this is, without a doubt, my happy place and I’ve missed it horribly. If this blog is disappointing, I’m sorry, and I totally get that. Like I said, I’m sick, the weather is awful, and reality is just a weird place to be today.