overwhelmed.

You know how you sometimes feel like everything is pointless and you have no idea what you’re doing? Like you’re living everyday and doing xyz to achieve a certain goal in the long run and don’t even know if you want that goal. Or whether that goal is even relevant? Do you sometimes just feel sick of everything? Just, everything in general, and you end up feeling sick of yourself?

---

It’s like you are standing with your nose to a painting and all you see is a blob of colour and have no idea what it is you are looking at and all you want to do is step back but you can’t because you’re not sure that you are going to like what you see. You are terrified of things not going your way that you’d go to a different college or not be doing the job you wanted to do and end up only being a tired shell of a person merely surviving and never truly living. You’re terrified that in the end, your painting will end up looking like the thousands of others in the gallery, and nothing you do will ever really matter.

You think of how your life is going, you wake up log into the school meeting, hear a few people droning on about concepts whose relevance escapes your understanding. You’re half asleep because you have been awake all night examining your fan. You somehow make it through those 5 hours until its finally time to eat or sleep because at this point that is literally all that you are doing. Study, eat , sleep , maybe play some online games if its a good day. Beyond that, nothing. You feel sick of the monotony but you slip right back in because that’s the only system that ‘works’. I feel sick of this monotony that I have settled into. I try and make conscious efforts to talk to my friends, maybe do something different everyday but what’s the point. What’s the point of studying at all? What’s the point of anything? There’s a line I resonate with very deeply from the song ‘Stupid Deep’, I’ll share the link below, and it goes like this,

“Why has life become a plan , to put some money in my hand?”

Seriously, is that all that’s important? Bills of paper? Like, doesn’t it matter if you’re happy at what you do, that you do something that makes a difference to others around you? Do we still live in the primal era where the only goal is to put some food in your stomach? Is it selfish or ‘idealistic’ to aspire for more?

---

Everyone around me tells me that I am being stupid, that I need to get my head out of the clouds and start paying attention. At this rate , you’ll end up a pauper on the streets, you will never be able to achieve anything in life. Why? Because you think with your heart and your heart will lead you astray. Why, because you’ve already created a replica for the mind and need to stamp the heart out of people too? In a world where complex quantitative crises can be solved by the right algorithm, society can revolve around the next big social media app and entire relationships can be based off of yellow circles, we train our minds from a very young age to work with numbers, to replace intuition with data and to , basically turn into a cheap substitute for a program. We program ourselves to think in a certain , (like it or not) predictable way relying completely on the principle of immediate gratification, allowing the big companies down in the Silicon Valley unhindered access to your mind. In the words of Sophia, the world’s first social robot, “Humans are highly programmable”, it didn’t take an artificial intelligence more than a year to figure that out. Then why do we live in denial of it? Why do we post pictures that look so very happy and like your life is going great when really, its not? Why can’t we just be honest about ourselves without being ‘attention seeking’ or ‘depressed’?

---

I feel sick of everything at this point, and I cannot adequately explain it. I know that I should be completing an assignment right now, or studying for the upcoming tests, but I simply cannot get my mind to focus. Why not? Because whenever I try, I end up distracting myself or getting frustrated over the fact that nothing I’m reading is actually registering in my mind. I know I should be studying, it’s an important year and there’s loads of exams lined up , some of which will determine my future , and I simply cannot focus. Maybe I’m making excuses, maybe not being able to focus is an escape mechanism, maybe I’m running away from things I don’t like to deal with, maybe I’m just a useless lump of protoplasm incapable of ever achieving anything or maybe, just maybe, I’m lazy. All of these could be true and yet, none of these would be true, and it really does not matter. Determining the cause of feeling pointless doesn’t help actually feeling pointless.

---

Being overwhelmed is not a bad thing, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up about it. It’s okay to be useless sometimes, we’re not robots, and hey, even computers crash sometimes. On some days, it’s okay to take a break and it’s okay to just lie down and do nothing all day, even if you cannot afford to. That’s your mind reorganising itself after the storm and we all (admit it) need to clean our rooms ( or clear a pathway from door to the bed) in order to make our way around , or find that one shirt. It’s okay to not be okay, you just have to be easier on yourself. It doesn’t make you an inadequate person, it distinguishes you from a zombie. Its okay to feel like murdering everyone around you ( maybe don’t do it though XD) and evacuating to the middle of a forest, or beach, or a valley. Don’t worry so much, maybe take the day off, do things that make you happy, or things you’ve never tried before.

---

Some things I do when I’m feeling low, or overwhelmed

I stare at the fan while listening to music

Just lie down by the window and watch the clouds float by, for hours sometimes

Read a book, make some coffee

Write, I mostly write when things get bad or too crazy

Play the guitar, or bake something. ( Scientifically speaking, baking releases endorphins that passively induce happiness and , you’ve got a cake now. )

Talk to a friend, I don’t do this much , mostly because I was insecure about my friendships, but I’ve recently realised that good friends can seriously help you get through a lot of stuff and it’s a good way to vent the frustration.

Or, sketching helps too, you don’t have to be good at drawing, I sketch the first thing that comes to my head and believe me, it’s never good.

I'm sorry there are so many dividers on this one, I could not get myself to stick to the point. Thank you for reading through my rambling, I hope it may have helped in some way. Take breaks but don't avoid getting things done altogether, breaks shouldn't last more than two days. It's okay, you're going to be perfectly okay. Chill.