I’m Sorry if You’re Living and You’re 20-Something

I’ve taken an eight-year hiatus from my presence in the blogosphere and tried to mind the gap with other, more capitalistic social media. I return to my roots now, both with my tail between my legs and a mild sparkle in my eye. While I thought myself more capable than the rest in mitigating the control my iphone has over my brain, time has proven me a mouse as susceptible as any other in the lab.

I definitely need a diary, and I can’t write quite fast enough by hand to make paper worth much, so here my musings shall lay to rest.

At 23 years old, most of my existence is spent thinking about what I’m thinking, thinking about what I’m doing and thinking about how I can be thinking and doing everything better. I outline my goals, go to therapy, and have even started a holistic health coaching program. I daydream about my vision for myself and my life and I lament the fact that I have every element I need to build it, except the most crucial: Time. Well that, and a truckload of money. So I tumble, drunk with desperation, into a cycle of routines, lifehacks and atomic habits. What will finally be the key to maximizing my limited free time? Will I be able to do it all… The housework, self-care, education, art, and exploration- all in my little life? I feel like, in terms of squeezing it in, I’ve tried it all: going to bed earlier, going to bed later, meal planning, cooking more, cooking less, time blocking projects, trying to focus on one thing at a time… The list is genuinely endless.As I type this, I am on a 10-minute Pomodoro-technique break. Using this new “strategy” to maximize my productivity at my desk through 30 minute sprints of work, balanced with 10 minute breaks to write, crossword, read, scroll through the Internet or just sit and stare at the wall.

I’ve tried Pomodoro a couple of times, the history of the technique and why it’s called such is actually quite adorable. The interval structure really works for me when I’m tackling a long day of tasks I don’t particularly feel passionate about. If you know me, you know I could spend days uninterrupted on a passion project. (Then leave it untouched for the rest of time, but that’s another issue altogether).

My crisis comes not from Pomodoro, or any similar strategy I’ve attempted to get a grip on my days, but from the need for it in my life at all. Why I would even need to invent and impose further structure on an already bloated schedule is the root of all my evils. Having 10 hour work days and a second (often third) job in order to try and get by, while a common story in our society today, is a miserable and sorry existence.

I have so much love for life, and so many ways to express it. I am simply too tired to do so. With negligible time and energy left to dedicate to the ways I love to celebrate being alive, I sit in paralysis, hoping that one day one of these “lifehacks” or something idiotic like that will save me.

So forgive my jaded tone and rambling, youthful frustration with the nature of our capitalistic machine. I truly don’t mean to perpetuate my misery. I begin here to establish my cornerstone, my starting line, if you will. A benchmark against which to hopefully compare some rambling in the future, and say “hey, things weren’t so bad, and now they’re even better.”

<3 i