When I was in school as a kid, I always looked forward to the bell ring, and for it all to end.
When I was working, I always looked forward to the time to go home, to swipe my card and get the hell out of there.
I was always looking forward, literally watching the clock, counting down the minutes.
Now that I'm free from work (for now), I feel aimless. Bored.
I keep myself busy, doing a lot of things I hadn't had time for before: playing the drums, learning Japanese, exploring all the coffee shops in my town. It's amazing how much you can do when you're free from a full-time workweek!
But now I almost want to work.
I think that it's a void I want to fill. To keep busy. Distract myself from this emptiness.
It's easy to be busy. It's an excuse. "Oh, I can't address this vague feeling deep inside because I gotta do this and then I gotta do this."
I walk by a college and think, hmmm I could enroll there. Just to keep busy.
Or I walk by a school or business and say, hmmm, I could work there.
But that would just procrastinate me dealing with this thing.
Is this what I was so looking forward to? To be "free" from work only to be followed by this... malaise?
I don't think going back to where I was is the answer. Maybe we all have this feeling, but never get around to it because of our busyness. Even when we do go on vacation, it's temporary, there's an end date, and the next thing you know we gotta get back to our job.
So I gotta face it. But what is it? I must name this demon in order to exorcise it.
Purposelessness?
Worthlessness?
Uselessness?
It's certainly a -lessness. There's something lacking.
If it's purpose, maybe we could say I just need some goals. But I have those, and I'm working on them. In fact, I've accomplished most of my 2024 list. But at this point it seems like I'm just going through the motions. There's something missing.
Maybe it's for the best that we keep busy. We commute and stay distracted on our phones and run errands. We do chores and meet friends and go from one place to the next. We do one thing and then it's on to the next, and the next and the next and the next.
But then if we stop, It is there. We're still enough to feel the presence of this white haze. Doubt. Existential. We drown it out with our activity, but never defeat it.
What is this thing?
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