Last week’s anger is still around. It’s currently locked in battle with my exhaustion in a way that is amplifying all my other emotions in ways I do not particularly appreciate, but then very little that’s positive has happened. I mean, I had a nice weekend, that was good, but I haven’t been able to make much headway on any job applications, nor have any of my floating problems resolved themselves. They’re not even closer to being resolved than they were before. Hell, I feel like I’ve made negative progress on some of them. I’ve tried talking through what’s going on with some people and that hasn’t actually helped at all. Normally that helps a lot–normally thinking out loud like that helps me push towards a better understanding of what’s going on with me but I feel like that hasn’t worked lately. To cap it all off, I feel like this is all pointless because I’ve got practical problems I need to solve now and all this theoretical stuff, while incredibly important to my sense of self, doesn’t matter as much. I just got my lease renewal which stands to raise my rent by over one hundred dollars, there’s some big changes happening at my employer that necessitate reconsidering stuff I thought I’d already settled about my future, and everything I thought I’d settled about how and why I spend my energy is suddenly in question again as a couple interactions that should be inconsequential have bent me out of sorts.

I think I’d be in much better shape right now if I was getting enough sleep. I can only imagine, of course, because I am getting a slightly higher average amount of sleep than I was two weeks ago, but four hours a night isn’t a lot better than three hours a night in terms of mental clarity and well-being. The exhaustion alone makes everything feel like a struggle. Every expenditure of energy is so much more draining thanks to how little sleep I’m getting, and that seems exponentially worse every time my anger flares up because of something happening in the world, something happening to me, or the original source of my current frustration and anger rekindles the smoldering coals within me. Everywhere I go for comfort or relief or even distraction just seems to make things worse these days. I used to be able to escape into Final Fantasy 14, but now that’s fraught with reminders of how I’m spending my energy. I used to be able to talk to friends, but now I have to carefully choose my words because I don’t have the energy to deal some of the opinions being offered to me. I used to be able to skim through discords, but now it’s just a reminder of how much all of my social relationships have shifted in the past couple years. I just want to be able to take things easy and enjoy myself for a while but I can’t seem to get past all of the problems constantly occupying my mind.

I know not all of this is entirely rational or reasonable. I know so much of this can probably be chalked up to exhaustion and burnout and being triggered by the constant pain and misery I see pasted everywhere across the internet, but that really doesn’t help me deal with how I’m feeling. I wish I could afford to have a breakdown. I wish I had people who’d check up on me (though that would require me letting on that I’m struggling and even if I have made a lot of progress toward being open about that, I’m still not very open about it relatively speaking). I wish I could just pause for a while and figure out how to deal with everything happening to me, but I don’t have that luxury. All these problems need to be solved. I have to figure out if I can push back strongly enough against my landlord to stop some of the proposed changes coming my way or I have to find somewhere new to live. I have to figure out if the changes at my workplace are going to be enough for me to stay in some capacity or if I need to keep working on finding a new job (now with added urgency because of the apartment thing). I need to do my taxes, find some way to make peace with my feelings and how I’m using my energy [which, get this, was mostly resolved by getting a couple decent nights of sleep and letting my mind unclench for a little bit], invest myself in the right places, and figure what to do about my sleep problems because waiting for them to just disappear on their own hasn’t worked so far [while I did get some decents nights of sleep, I did also just have another entirely sleepless night, so this is still on-going].

It’s just all so much and I have to figure out how to handle it around fifty-hour work-weeks because I absolutely can’t afford to skimp on the hours any time soon. I need to have a comfortable pillow in case I have to move or need some time between jobs to move and whatnot. I need to get back on the horse that is paying down my student loans at a rapid clip. Hell, I need to earn extra money in case I can’t find a better (or at least cheaper) place to live and wind up needing to pay increased rent for a couple months. So I need rest to make progress, but I can’t afford to rest without risking sliding further into debt. I need to stop constantly looking for comfort in places that are only getting me more upset, but can’t get anything done if I’m too upset and tired and angry to focus on anything but the problems gnawing on my heart. I wish I could just wave a magic wand and get some better sleep. I wish I could just flip a switch and feel better about things that probably wouldn’t be problems if I wasn’t so tired and angry. I wish I could just leave my job and rest for a while before needing to go do something new that needs to pay better or else I won’t ve able to live in any city. I’m just so tired of everything in my life being a problem I need to solve. It never seems to end.