This July Had Me Jaded
And then I became judicious — I think
This month started with a burn-out, the first dose of the Covid vaccine, and its side effects. There was also an abject sense of failure, as I hadn’t progressed as much as I hoped to on my 30-day challenge.
Sensing a loss of motivation and a severe sense of fatigue, I decided to take a couple of days off. That turned into a week due to intense pain in my right hand and shoulder, courtesy of the Jab.
A low period of Mental Health followed, and some external stimuli pushed me towards a breakdown. I felt as if I was at the end of my rope.
Actually, I would describe it accurately as below the rope, fallen in the pit of anxiety. I wrote a poem about it, addressing my sinking feelings but I don’t think I am done processing it.
I celebrated a relationship anniversary, the 11th one, to be precise, at home. Another milestone spent in the confines of the Pandemic and the three-day weekend spent lounging left me feeling empty.
Before this event, I was okay — I felt okay, but after, I couldn’t help but take it personally. It seems that I can’t catch a break.
A planned staycation turned into an impromptu workation, where I went to a hotel for a few days, yearning for a change of scenery. It helped, as did the period of rest, but my Anxiety kept building in the background.
It took me more strength than I had to get back to the grind. Writing after a break, however reasonable or necessary, has always been challenging, but this time it was utterly devastating.
I felt as I was back at square one again, being swallowed by the pit, unable to fight the demons of doubt. I didn’t know how to help myself.
I managed to get a few pieces out in both these weeks, which seemed like an eternity. I was fighting an invisible battle, and I couldn’t tell if I was winning — if I was making any difference at all.
By mid-July, I saw the writing on the wall. If I didn’t finish the challenge now, I would never be able to get past it. I had already changed it to a 30-article challenge, accounting for my poor mental health and extenuating circumstances. But what next?
I decided to remove time as a variable, but I could keep this up only for so long. I needed to get out of this slump and write every day.
When you reach the end, whatever that is in your current opinion, there are really only two options. Accept defeat or pretend it never happened and keep going. I decided to choose the latter.
For the first time in the past three years, I left my feelings unprocessed, practically avoided them in fact, and enforced mental clarity.
I barely scratched the surface in my articles. If you read them, you can barely tell how broken I was right before typing them out. The funny thing is, I forgot about it too. I typed the next thing without worrying about the former, and this was…new…very strange.
In the last two weeks of July, I caught up and was able to complete my goals. To be candid, my feelings about it are bittersweet.
Obviously, I am happy to be done with this challenge, If I can still call it that. I am also proud of myself for writing 30 pieces without letting anything permanently stray me from this path.
But I hate that it had to be done this way. That I had to shut off parts of my mind, not attend to my problems, and pretend to myself that things are okay. I am not really sure what I felt, but the thing is, I didn’t have the opportunity to find out. And that’s unsettling.
I published several articles a week that passed my standards of quality, and this is a new record for me. I should be happy; I should believe.
I am feeling the positive stuff I should feel, but there’s a sting. I am not yet sure how to process this duality. Do I need to be less “me” to complete challenges that I set for myself? — This is a weird thought.
Surprisingly, everything worked perfectly during this time. I was able to find topics to write about, things to be angry at, which transformed into a rant, and even managed to jot down poems.
I was making effective decisions every day without fail and strategically moving forward. I’ve had articles with 2 reads; one of them was from me in incognito mode as “1” looked very bad. Another piece that didn’t get distributed performed very well — my best so far.
Neither of these things got to me. I sat in front of my laptop in a zen-like state, where nothing could bother me. This experience was surreal.
July has clearly left me with a lot to think about, stuff to unpack, process, and make sense of. I am going to take out time for this.
I need to get in touch with myself. I also want to spend some time engaging in hobbies that make me feel calm and get the creative wheels churning. August could be contrasting to July; it might even be peaceful.
I am planning to start an unofficial series to take the stress off of what to write about every day. For a while, I want to return to writing just for the love of it, without worrying about stats or distribution and what constitutes “good” writing. I want to have some fun.
The working title is Art inspired by Art. I am considering limiting this one to music, one of my constant sources of ideas, highlight songs that make me feel stuff, and discuss them in detail.
I want to pour out my raw emotions, thoughts from the deepest corners of my mind and discuss what it feels like when someone gets you.
If you don’t think that this idea is crazy, please feel free to join in and treat this as a writing prompt. I’ll soon introduce a tag to use, and we can read the stories published by others. Don’t limit yourself to music, think paintings, movies, tv/web shows, and even articles on this platform.
I don’t have much precedence to be hopeful, but for some reason, I am. A few other long-term goals, like putting a story on Kindle publishing, creating an e-book from my personal essays, are also on my radar.
I want to spend August doing what I want when I want without limits. I also want to make it count, do some work that makes me happy.
Am I asking for too much? — I guess time will tell.
