#26 From the notepad
about my existentialism on a Sunday
the following is my notepad app, open at around 12.17 am, after trying to fall asleep this Sunday.
Super second guessing myself!!! It’s so annoying!! I feel really second guessy about what I’m doing and what I think I should be doing. I am so busy with everyday life that I'm not even busy at all, or maybe not busy with the right things? It's super strange
I feel like I have an idea of what I want to do now, since a little bit ago [exactly a week, I am chronically impatient], but it feels like the gap between wanting to do it and then being brought into a reality where I *do* it is so big and weird at the moment. I remember when I began working on my own and it felt like opportunity kept falling from the sky and onto my lap.
I think back to that time and what kind of attitude I had towards that period in my life – it was some kind of attitude that resembles a sort of, “I don't know how it's going to work out, but hopefully, it does” energy that was kind of like, fuck it, let's just see what happens – because what happened before it sucked so bad I felt I had no choice but to surrender, lol
Now I'm like, ok, I've surrendered, I *been* surrendering, but where is the opportunity? I also joined an email list from Pea asking me who I want to be and what steps I'm taking today to feel that way, right now.
My intuition keeps telling me: “Mind your own business! Keep your head down. Don't get distracted!” But it's so strange!!! The world is so weird. Especially when you're a woman in your 20s. I'm not dating, but it somehow feels like I should be. I love being independent, but I wonder what it would be like to live with a long-term partner. I try [and often do] set boundaries, but I fear being called defensive or extreme. I am not interested in anything in particular lately, so I wonder if I've lost my passion for all things in some weird alternate universe I am currently living in, although that can't possibly be true.
I feel so uninspired !!!! I want to feel more zest for life, for my life. It's so weird! There is tension around who I want to be and who I'm being right now. I'm so self-conscious around people lately and so weird and malleable in my mind, making little things feel so huge, so in my head about the smallest things!!! So much weird existential anxiety. What am I looking like right now??? Why am I sweating so much??? It's so humid but cloudy and uncomfortable!!! Being a human is so uncomfortable!!!! Lol.
I don't have the faintest clue of what I'm supposed to be doing, so I've been working in a vintage store to kill time. I literally do not have A SINGLE CLUE about what on EARTH I have to be doing right now, and I feel spoiled because I have this part-time store job and it cannot keep my existentialism away so I'm also avoiding any writing this week, God forbid I have a single thought !!! I don't even know *what* exactly I'm so afraid of!! As in, I don't think anyone else really knows what's going on either, at least 75% of the time. Is everyone also just waking up every day going to work and doing the same shit all the time??? And how do they do it for FORTY hours????? That's so intense! Are they really into it all those 40 hours ??? I'm not sure.
I'm so confused because I've been off the full-time work routine for so long. I don't really understand why we spend so much time in jobs we don't love or do things we find no joy in (or very little satisfaction in) but then I think about the steady paycheck and the security and then I think, THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. OBVIOUSLY, it makes sense!! And maybe, you don't even have to love 100% of the job, maybe there's a solid 65% of the job you love and then 35% you don't love, but you accept is part of the deal.
The responsibility exchange also makes sense — do this job and get these days off, get this much money, rain or shine, it's going to come every month, always on time. I UNDERSTAND. But is it worth those 40 hours a week of life? from when you wake up until 6 pm most days? and why is it that we're still doing this as a society? can't we figure out 9 am to 1 pm workdays by now? surely, a lot of the stuff desk jobs are made of can be somewhat automated or optimized. no??? ok.
See, if I had a job maybe I wouldn't be considering all these things because I probably wouldn't have the time to consider them. I'm also thinking about all these jobs I could be doing and re-entering the corporate workforce and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Having to slack people and email them and set up meetings is fine, but doing that every day??? EVERY DAY??? OH MY GOD
I don't think I can do that right now, but I am also 26 years old and the measuring stick for anything is virtually nonexistent. The cultural scripts and stories our parents grew up with? They simply no longer apply. Or maybe they do for some of us, and maybe for some of us, those work out really well — like my peers who are married or co-habiting and well on their way to an established, corporate career — and I absolutely love that for them (unironically, I really do), but what about those of us who are just in between things, in that liminal, weird space where we can literally feel our skin contracting before it sheds and expands? Where do we go from there?
I feel like a teenage girl most of the time. I was walking through the supermarket earlier today, picking out ingredients to make risotto with my friends for dinner, and I had the thought that when I was a teen, I probably didn't know that I was going to have food in the fridge, ready to eat, for the last time ever, when I did. As in, I will forever be responsible for grocery shopping, so that food gets to the fridge, and is subsequently cooked and put on the dinner table, every night of my life. I am now responsible for that. Otherwise? It's not getting done! I won't be eating!!!!! THERE WILL BE NO DINNER TO BE HAD!!!
I just wanna go home and take a nap. I don't want to think about my career or going on LinkedIn and applying to jobs or contractor roles or temporary full-time placements. I don't want to scroll on Instagram and see a single more wedding or baby bump. I know — they don't have a thing figured out either — but they have some kind of purpose! the child will be born or the wedding will be had or the house will be renovated or the trip will be planned! And I know, it doesn't solve the existential dread of not knowing what's next, but it keeps you BUSY!!! And I want to have some kind of thing to look forward to that is tangible — a degree, a promotion, something like that — I am a teenager and I am therefore unfit to parent, but maybe birthing a degree or a career move is exactly what I need. If only I knew what the actual degree or career would be.
You know what, fuck it, whatever. It will go on whichever way it goes. I guess all I need is a good night's sleep, a solid workout schedule, and some sense of newfound control over my life by going to the same café I was going to every day until June, when summer began and my life suddenly became some sort of existential tunnel.
Starting with that weird stint in London and nowadays, the store job I'm doing, to get some busy work in the summer months before September hits and we’re back to school. (Not even back to school — I wish I could just do a Master’s degree right now. Deferring topics like purpose and meaning sounds so sexy rn).
Of course, watching Barbie for a second time in the span of two weeks is probably not the best recipe for existential cures. I don't know what the fuck I was made for. I am drowning in the human experience. I cried with the last montage of girlhood, womanhood, what it means to be alive. I just want to be part of the world but I am so uncomfortable. I don't know if I'm doing anything right. (So maybe I am doing something right). I don't know.
Anyway, have a great start to your week, and happy Monday/Day when you read this! Sorry to make you think about the abyss (Not really!)
XXXX
Clem