I am in a bad place again

Lights out Alice!

I am in bad shape, my head is in a bad place, I am procrastinating a lot, I am riddled with crippling anxiety in any situation, I have been making poor decisions, I have been isolating (a touch more than normal) and then letting resentment and emotions build up to the point that I am unable to behave rationally or in the manner that is expected of me in any situation that decides to be anything more than trivial.

I am in a bad shape. I am getting pretty anxious these days and combined with a lot of unnecessary overthinking and scenario devising means that I am already mentally exhausted by the time the situation actually presents itself. It is crippling. It is heightening the doubts in my head, lead to poor decision making and preventing me from working towards improvement and just leading to a fast downward spiral, which just adds to the overthinking and crippling anxiety the next time around.

If I had to do a self assessment to map which factors were contributing how much to this state, I would assign a majority value to the MS situation. It really broke me, but it wasn't just her, it was the combined effect of the entire scenario that had accumulated from effectively September 2022 culminating in a pretty heartbreaking end to MS in October 2023 which left me in tatters about the entire situation. In this regard, I am a pretty low state, effectively questioning myself on every front, every factor and whether I even know what I want out of this or do I even know how to go about it in the first place.

The next major contributor, and this would be neck and neck with MS situation, is the fact that I am lost in life because I do not have a major goal to work towards. I do not know what is the next mountain that I want to climb. I do not know what my measure of success looks like. I do not know how I want to grow even though I do know that I want to grow on my own terms. For the first time in life, there is no another exam, another preparation or another structure that can act as a crutch or a saving grace to show the way. I really think that pursuing a post grad degree was in some ways just pushing off doing the hard thing of figuring out what I wanted out of my life down the line. Any educational institute does the awesome job of making you feel limitless on what you can do with your life and I was intoxicated with that power. Another thing that an educational institute does is give you a clear pathway that requires little to no thinking of what you actually WANT out of life. These are the subjects, these are the chapters, this is the stream, this is the exam, perform well and you will feel like you have achieved something even though it might not be the case.

Another sub factor is that I am procrastinating heavily in is actually sitting and trying to figure out my long term goals, aspirations, plans A to D and how I would like to grow. What would be my success metrics and how would I go about working on them. I have effectively been procrastinating on it since March, which makes it around 8 months of putting away something that is VERY IMPORTANT at this stage. Life will throw unknowns and realities which I have to deal with, but it is important to have an overarching northern star and bite-sized goals and a plan to get there so that I can assess deviation at each step. I like tracking my progress and even though I subconsciously work towards sabotaging it, I do tend to catch the slide, eventually, HOPEFULLY.

Although I am not labelling it as the major factor, I do think the next one is the one that is exacerbating most of the issues right now. I am not used to this. I am not used to not having to be in an all out battle. I am not used to having the odds stacked against me. I am not used to not drowning. In every situation, my body is comfortable fighting against the odds, since it takes away the pressure off winning in some ways and also the pressure of expectations. But more so, for me, when the situation is all hands on deck, I can put on my blinders and just focus on getting things done. A partial zen can be reached where I am not procrastinating and am able to just get things done. This is the calm that operating at near capacity of the brain in a particular situation allows me to perform at. When I am overwhelmed with tasks and things keep going wrong, then I can prioritize, optimise and not feel like I am missing out. When I am only at say 50% capacity utilisation, I do not know what to do with the remaining 50% of my capacity and instead of finding tasks to fill that gap or just resting (ha ha, highly unlikely), I end up paralyzed because I spend too much time planning and there are too many optimal options and I don't know which one to let go and so I sit there wasting time and end up doing nothing which makes it even worse because it plays in my head and adds to my shitty headspace. I am pretty sure when I will look back, this will end up being the biggest factor and the one that I would definitely need to correct over the course of time if I ever do not want to be back in this place again. However, I also know that I am not good at learning from my mistakes and I will probably waste all my progress again. 

I do not know how to build onto past progress. I get too overwhelmed that I am not at the bottom/ underdog with nothing to lose and that I can actually build on a base and just end up sabotaging myself. It is like I only know how to function in situations where I am the underdog. 

The next is being impatient and not working on my basics. To be fair, it builds on the problem presented by the fact that I do not know how to operate when the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against me. I do not know how to build on something.

The cherry on top is being forgetful. I am so impatient and fickle minded that I don't stick to a plan. I get too easily distracted. I do not put in the work and just want to get to where I want to be without the journey. No, it is not that I do not know that I need to put in the work or that I have to go through it, it is just that I am so fickle minded and ADHD in my behaviour that I make plans in my notebook, get exhausted, take a break, forget to actually work on the plans, let a couple of days pass thinking I have a good plan in place but not actually work the said plans, panic at my lackadaisical approach over the past couple of days, think that I actually do not have a plan, forget that I did have a plan, go about creating a plan in the next few days, be happy that I have things somewhat figured out, go on a break and not work on the said plan. Repeat. Ad infinitum.