Angst. Not really. Sort of? Whatever.

I’m taking a break from my usual writing program/schedule/practices to focus on writing that’s going to help me with some things I’m trying to work through right now. I’ve been staying off Twitter more and more, lately, and it has gotten me thinking. I’m not exactly staying away from Twitter these days so much as kind of realizing that my brain’s a bit full and having a hard time saying anything without a whole bunch of unrelated stuff coming out. I feel like I need a break, but taking a break hasn’t changed anything. I’d really like to confidently push on like I have been because determination, discipline, and hard work are my strongest virtues, but part of me is starting to believe it might be time to take a break from moving forward. I haven’t spent much time on me, and I think I need to.

You know those diagrams people are always bringing up? “Fast, Cheap, and Good. You get two.” is the one that comes up in most of my professional experiences. “Sleep, social life, or grades, pick two” was the mantra of my fellow college students. I’ve heard of several more, too. These days, I feel like I’m making a similar choice. “Hold a job that pays your bills and student loans, work on writing projects, and maintain mental and physical health. Pick two.” Job and Writing have been my choices for the past 6.5 months and I think it’s starting to show.

Which is weird because while I still feel less emotionally stable than I believe is my norm and like my health (physical and mental) is always teetering on the edge of going somewhere bad, I feel like I’m handling it better than I ever have. All this writing helps me. It provides me a sense of location and a tether so that, no matter how bad the storm gets, I never drift far from where I’ve decided to stay. This doesn’t make the storms smaller, but it makes it easier to get back to things once they’ve passed.

I guess what I’m thinking here is that maybe I dropped anchor in the wrong place? Maybe I need to drift for a little bit? Which is hard, because I’ve grown to rely on the sense of security that constant connection to something gives me. I definitely need to spend time looking inward, whatever that means for my ocean/storm/tether/anchor metaphor. The big thing is, I don’t really know what I need and clinging to what I’ve been doing when it clearly isn’t what I need isn’t going to do anything but prolong this.

Which, you know, looking back on what I’ve been producing lately, seems pretty damn obvious now. Which is also one of the benefits of all my writing. I can see some stuff float to the surface if look back at the right time. Which is to say I’m not going to stop writing. First of all, I’ve got another 6.5 months of daily blog posts to put up. That’s not going to stop because, no matter what else happens during 2018, I will end it able to look back and say “look at this awesome thing I did. I am the shit when it comes to daily posts.” Secondly, blogging my thoughts every morning is a great place to find patterns, test out ideas, and just figure out what’s going on in my head. For instance, this whole post and the decision to change the course of my blog for a bit started as a what was supposed to be a 3-tweet message about why I haven’t been on much.

I need to spend more time untangling the mess that is my thoughts and emotions. I need to spend more time figuring out what it is I want from day-to-day. I need to spend more time investing in myself because, right now, I’m about as in-need for some serious time and effort as the US’s infrastructure. Haha… Topical humor.

I deflect all real attempts at connection with most of my peers using humor and pretending to not be serious. I spend way too much time monitoring myself for idiotic and self-destructive attempts to sabotage my relationships. If people ask me what I want or how I feel when I get emotional or express dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, I honestly cannot tell them anything. I have no answer to those questions. As someone who used to pride himself on his ability to take a look inside and figure out exactly why I felt the way I did or what things were going on that were making me feel a certain way, I’ve done a really shitty job of maintaining that.

I need it back because it was what let me constructively deal with my mental health issues, grow as much as I did, and work on growing healthy relationships with my friends. It wasn’t the only thing and I’m not entirely up shit-creek without it, but it would really help me work on my mental health issues if I could actually figure out how I feel about things that come up with my therapist and what exactly I want out of… well… Everything.