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Here are some of my diary entries from early 2021:
My thinking is scattered and confused. Can’t focus. Can’t concentrate. Don’t want to. Give me distractions. Don’t wanna work. Seems like too much, everything. To-do List depressing. Yet I know work would make me feel better, I need a project. Work can be a distraction. What do I need to be distracted from? boredom?
Tired of doing nothing, but don’t want to do something. Anxiety, boredom, depression.
Where is my enthusiasm or projects like last spring? Must get back to it.
The story I’m telling myself these days is that I’m not doing well. I’m not doing well, I can’t focus, I don’t want to work, but I don’t want to do nothing, I want to be distracted but I don’t know from what. There are voices in my head and they are depressing.
Can’t make a list can’t clean my desk can’t progress in any meaningful way, feel hopeless. The world is a doomscroll and that’s all I want to do is look at it, then wonder why I’m so depressed and anxious.
Then I saw this at the New York Times:
We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.
Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.
That’s it! Turns out I wasn’t alone in feeling these things.
And starting today, I am making an effort to come out of languishing and start flourishing! First up, start walking every day.
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