Been a while since I’ve had any sort of consistency with posts, and I’m honestly not going to promise anything this time around.

I’ve found myself just burnt out, exhausted and generally apathetic to most things. Between work, being sick recently, general drama happening around me and a myriad of other obligations it’s been a rough period.

However, I realized the other day something that has been getting to me much worse than any of the stress or drama. I’ve been in a damn RUT lately.

Every day I wake up and my morning plays out mostly the same as previous mornings. I then go to work, which is what it is. I come home and then my evening, similar to my morning, follows a similar routine to evenings I have already experienced. My day-to-day life is honestly a wash of the same activities or environments over and over and over again. It’s like Groundhog Day but disappointing and with a considerably less humorous leading man.

I think the worst thing is, I have no idea how I got here. I’ve always been very resilient to routine, to a fault honestly. I’ve been resistant to it, to the point where establishing practice routines for bands or regular writing times to keep fresh was a damn chore. However, something changed this year and I find myself just latching on to the same leisure activities over and over, focusing my brain on the same writing projects or books or comics over and over. Day in, day out, same activities, same food, same places.

And honestly I JUST realized this. I was lying in bed wondering why I as feeling a bad case of what Tee calls the “Smundays,” that feeling of dread people feel as a Sunday winds down and they get ready for the work week. What was confusing me was that I LOVE my job. I look forward to it. I pretty consistently have tasks to occupy my time, I get to interact with great people at a store that I am passionate about watching grow (and having a hand in that growth), I have a decent bit of autonomy but still a decent support structure, and, aside from a bout of small slip-ups from a month or so ago when my depression was at a particular ferocity, I have become quite good at this job. So it wasn’t that: I was definitely not lying in bed fretting about going to work. Hell, I would think about work and be excited to get done the projects I had on my list. So then what kept me fretting and locked away in my head about Monday?

It clicked that I wasn’t fretting the actual time I spent at work, but rather the time bordering that. I was dreading waking up and having the same mornings of indecision. Should I write or read or work out? I was agonizing over my evenings of time drained away to the TV or video games. I was bothered by weekends of just sitting around my home or the homes of friends. I was just generally fretting the state that my free time is currently in, and it honestly shocked me.

I’m honestly not sure what this all even means right now. I don’t know if I just need more variety or if spontaneity is the key. Maybe I need more active hobbies. Maybe I just need less caffeine. I do not actually know what the solution is going to be, but I do know I am taking two major steps to work toward feeling better about where my life is. For one, I am going to practice some variety in my free time. I’m not always going to default to the easiest or laziest activity. I’m going to get my writing routines back in place, an irony which is not lost on me in the slightest, and I’m going to get out of the damn house more. I’m going to satisfy my wanderlust a bit. For two, I’m going to remind myself that it’s okay to have a decompression day and not be “on” all the time. Even though I’ve been in an unproductive rut, I think part of the rut’s entire existence is due to the fact that I am typically always “on,” in that I am always painfully aware of productive things I SHOULD be doing. Which in one sense is good, but moreso is just not. This usually results in believing that no activity is truly the best use of my time, even very productive activities. I need to remind myself that it’s okay to be that focused for a few days and then take a day or two to just relax and recharge. I used to practice this outlook, and it was when I was at my best and generally just getting shit done. Need to get back to that.

I like to leave my blog posts with some sort of point, otherwise they’re just me whining. I guess my advice this time would be take some time to actually look at your beasts. Stare your abyss in the eyes and figure out EXACTLY what has you bothered. If you are unhappy or anxious or depressed or angry, confront that. Take a moment in a safe place and give this feeling a face and find out where it lives. Despite the huge post bitching about how bored I am, I honestly am EXTREMELY happy that I’ve found a reason, because now I can work for a solution. We have a tendency to just write things like this off, but that is only doing ourselves a disservice. Own your negative emotions and understand them. That’s the only actual way to address them.

Anyway, here’s to future adventures.

~C