existential crisis says hi

It’s 4 am and you blink at your laptop screen with a dazed look on your face, unable to effectively produce a coherent sentence. You type out what you thought would be a crowd-pulling opening, but now that you see those phrases absurdly pieced together, you press your lips together in concern.

It is much worse than you thought. You have reached a new low at the very beginning of your non-existent writing career. The little finger of your right hand lingers on the delete key for longer than you’d like as you tilt your head, silently contemplating if you should destroy this surviving evidence of your mediocre talent. You decide against it because your brain conjures up an even more dismal probability — an opening worse than this. Although there is part of you that believes that isn’t entirely possible as the bar presently is incredibly low, you lack the mental stamina to explore this possibility.

You reach out to your mobile phone with the intention of seeking some much needed inspiration. You do not know how you end up losing yourself in the convoluted alleys of social media. An insidious yawn threatens your workaholic ambitions. You instinctively throw away your phone, it drops with a rather loud thud on the table. You mutter a few words of self-deprecation under your breath as you grasp it with worry. No damage incurred, you thank the stars.

All music manages to lull you to sleep, even the obnoxious irresistible party numbers you usually groove to. You type out a few more sentences, at this point you honestly do not care if they convey any semblance of logic. You misspell a simple word like “irresistible”. You throw back your head, unable to distinguish if it is due to disgust, dread or pure frustration. With a strong sense of shame, you proceed to google the word in question and then rectify your error.

With your head in your hands, you realize that you truly have hit rock bottom. You remember the time your younger sister called you “sasti Jane Austen (wannabe Jane Austen)”. It did greatly offend you at the time, but you chuckled in good humor to look cool and nonchalant. You told yourself you could handle a joke easily while plotting how you could extend your left foot at a 45 degree angle to trip her so that she may conveniently break her nose. However, you didn’t do that — which sometimes you regret and sometimes you don’t. Now, you wonder if she was right.

You introspect while you continue to stare blankly at a screen with subaltern sentences. A nap is what you need, twenty minutes and you’ll be as crisp as freshly baked bread. You remind yourself that you must not tell lies. You are fully aware you’ll wake up the next morning and curse your luck. Another yawn inconspicuously creeps up and escapes your lips. Yet you continue to relentlessly persevere.

The ruthless onslaught of slumber continues. You call up a friend who inhabits a different time zone in the hope that the interaction may spruce you up. “I’ve been having a bad 10 days” you say, probing for a few words of consolation. “I’ve been having a bad nineteen years” comes the sharp response. Surely, I can’t argue with that.

You thought you were well-prepared for a day like this — a day when words may elude you. Turns out you weren’t and we do have a long way to go. I really need to reach a point in my life where I can work despite deadlines and not because of them, you whisper to yourself. However, today is not that day and we must bid adieu to wishful thinking.

If only, you say to yourself, but then violently shake your head to get rid of this ridiculous thought. “If..if…if doesn’t exist”, the words of Rafael Nadal echo in your head. The temptation is real isn’t it? To think of the mirage of what could have been. What a pity that we must confine ourselves to what is, the disappointment called reality.

Your fingers continue to glide from key to key as you theorize your internal soliloquy. You’ve managed to write gibberish about not being able to write at all. It’ll have to do.

Feel free to reach out to me. We’re all allowed to have our mini existential crises from time to time :)

However, if there is one thing that does help, it is the miracle called memes: