There’s so much I want to do. People I want to hang out with, and new folks I want to meet.
There is so much I want to learn. Books I want to read, and museums I want to visit.
There is so much I want to experience. Countries I want to see, and mountains I want to hike.
There is so much I want to express. Poetry I want to write, speeches I want to share.
I want to grow existing friendships and cultivate new ones. I want to push myself out of my comfort zone and experience things I’ve never experienced. I want to learn instruments and the words to my favorite songs.
I’ve foreseen a life for myself. It is the life I want. It is the life I’ve seen myself having for years, decades even.
And yet, I feel nowhere close to that life.
There’s a difference in maintaining blind faith, and putting up blinders to the truth.
The truth is, I am regularly debilitated by what I call depression. There will be something I so badly want to do, and yet I physically feel unable to get out of bed to do it.
And I’m a skeptic, y’know. For years when I heard or read people talking about this type of depression, I told myself it was their fault. There was something they were missing, or something they were doing wrong. And I’m all about empowerment and saying “won’t” instead of “can’t”, because it’s less victim-y…
With all that being said, there are legitimately times where I cannot move. It’s a terrifying experience, really. And also humbling.
For the first time in my life, I don’t know if my dreams are going to come true. I’m thinking that maybe I’ve had it all wrong, and maybe I’ve been unwittingly digging myself this deep hole I’m currently inhabiting.
I don’t know.
All I know is, I don’t want to live life the way I’ve been living. If I keep going on the way I’ve been, I won’t keep going on.
So let’s circle back at the purpose for this blog. 365 days of embracing the unknown and writing about it… because frankly the know-it-all approach is exhausting.
Why did I want to do this?
Well, I saw that other people were successful with blogs. I saw the movie Julie & Julia, and how in the original true story Julie also did a 365-day blog… And it was challenging and almost broke her marriage up and lots of people wanted her to quit, but she prevailed… And got a book deal out of it.
So did I do this for this hope of success? This expectation of a specific ending?
Sounds sort of counter-intuitive to the whole “relinquishing control” + “go-with-the-flow” set-up of this blog.
What if I simplify the focus?
Do I enjoy writing each day? No. Then again, I’m at a place in my life where I’m not enjoying anything. Like, anything. So it’s hard for me to decipher if something is good or bad for me when I’m so out of touch with what feels good.
I’ve had a friend urging me to stop this blog. I think he thinks I’m killing myself through it because I’m not living a daily life where I’m plugged into real life people. I’m sharing my heart and soul every day with minimal response or feedback or “success”, and I’m drowning.
At the very least, I’ll consider his recommendation. Part of me wants to push forward even harder in spite of his lack of belief in this project (that’s a weird way of wording it; I think he’s mostly just concerned about me). I want to prove him wrong… Prove that I can handle this, and that it will somehow help me.
But, I’m too tired for that shit.
I’m tired of trying to prove myself to anyone.
Right now, getting out of bed is a miracle. So… I’ve gotten my miracle for the day.
And am going back to sleep.
And I will consider quitting this whole thing. Deleting the website. Possibly deleting my Facebook and LinkedIn, too. Just unplug from the virtual world and focus on living in the physical realm for a bit.
It sure would be nice to stop caring about likes and followers. Did you know that it’s nearly impossible to get picked up by a publisher without a platform? Which is, essentially, a bunch of people who follow and love you.
But seriously… Trying to build a blog in order to attain followers is the most draining and nauseating thing I’ve ever done, and I really do wonder if the lesson of this endeavor is less of a PUSH THROUGH THE PAIN FOR THE NEXT 249 DAYS and more of a “it’s okay to quit something if you are miserable doing it.”
:shrugs:
We’ll see.