I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. What sort of personal site would this be if I didn't write them out for your reading pleasure?
For the last few days, or weeks (I am no longer sure, time shrinks and contracts around me), I have been feeling what I guess you could call dejected. Burnt out. Not hopeless per se - I'm not quite there yet - but not at my full ebb. Everyone feels like this sometimes, I know. It is part of the normal spectrum of human emotion, and I am not seeking to pathologise that which is pretty normal and within the bounds of what you would expect for a human person. That doesn't make it pleasant to deal with.
I guess what's really getting me down is the humdrum monotony of my life. When I was sixteen, if you'd asked how my life would look ten years later, I would never have said that it would look like this. At the time, I was planning to head to university to study social work. I expected that I'd be a young professional by the grand old age of twenty-six, with a flat of my own and maybe I would even be married...
Ha!
Now, obviously, when you are sixteen, you are very young, very naive, very green. I had thought that twenty-six seemed impossibly grown-up and mature, and although I am grown-up, I often feel half a child still. There is no sense in going back and wishing to take my younger self by the shoulders and shake sense into her; it's sense that she would not understand due to age, but would eventually gain thanks to age. And I know, rationally, that I am still very young, and that I have plenty of time. I know that when I am thirty-six I will look back at this time with mingled embarrassment and nostalgia.
But also, I think there is some merit to the way I feel. Yes, twenty-six is young, but there are others around me of the same age who have proper careers, are married, have children. I am in a relationship, but we aren't married, and children seem very far off. I do have a job, but it's not a career. And this is the point which my brain keeps catching on, that of my fucking job. I don't dislike the job. The job is pretty straightforward and doesn't require unsocial hours. The pay isn't great, but neither is the responsibility. I can't work from home, but it does mean that I am able to leave my work at work. The people I work with are generally very nice and I have made some lifelong friends there. I guess I just didn't think I'd still be working there. The month just gone marks my sixth anniversary.
It happened like this - sixteen-year-old me worked really hard and got into university. She went for a year, liked it, met nice people, and realised on the eve of her second year that she didn't want to do social work at all and probably never had. So she dropped out. She already had a job at a shop, where her contract was for eight hours a week and she usually managed to get more, but she needed a proper job with more hours and more money, just for a year. She was going to try and settle herself and then go back to university after a year. She was going to study sociology or psychology or philosophy.
But she ended up staying at the job she found, because the job she'd applied for - part-time - miraculously became full-time and she found that she liked the routine. But then she decided to go back to university, albeit online, albeit part-time, but she kept at her job, and then she became I and I am still there.
I believe there is an old Jewish proverb that applies here - "You make the plans, and God laughs".
There's no progression. The nature of the job dictates that, as does the structure of the organisation I work for; positions at a senior level are exceedingly rare. I would need to wait for somebody to die or retire for a post to open. Promotion does not exist. It also isn't at all related to the degree I am doing. Every day that passes fills me with another drop of dread; what if, because I lack the required experience, I can never break into the industry I'm studying for? I look at jobs in my area for somebody with my level of experience (read: none), and I apply for them, and I never hear back. I know that part of this is the generally nightmarish job market at the moment - and I know also that I should just be grateful to be in work, as there are scores of young people who simply cannot find anything - but that only stems the dread flow for a little bit before it begins dripping once again in earnest.
I am stuck in this rut. Spinning my wheels. I keep thinking that perhaps I ought to hand in my notice and take a year-long sabbatical. Go travelling - backpack around Vietnam, roam the streets of Barcelona, maybe camp up in the Scottish Highlands for a bit. Maybe focus entirely on writing and get one of those fucking novels that have been brewing in my head written, actually written, not polished up to a half-draft before being abandoned in favour of another, better idea. Maybe I'll take a year out and get fully up to speed with my schoolwork. But my workplace doesn't actually allow sabbaticals - not for somebody in my role, anyway - so I'd be leaving and then spending a year with no job. If the market's bad now, it'll only get worse for somebody who has spent a year out of it entirely.
I have felt this way before, and I know it will go away. What is stopping me from making changes? The fact that I - for all I have said above - actually fear change quite a bit, I guess. And like I said, I know I'm being a bit of a baby. I know I should be lucky to have a job, even if it is dead-end and ultimately a bit pointless. I do have skills - mostly technical, and of the customer service variety - so I know that it isn't totally hopeless.
I don't know. I guess I just want to wallow for a bit. I'm sure I'll feel better soon. I already feel a bit better for having written it all out.
I don’t usually do New Years’ Resolutions, or not these days, anyway. Like a depressing number of teenage girls, my resolutions throughout my adolescence were usually appearance-based – ‘lose weight’ took the top spot for a period of four or five years – and were generally unattainable entirely. (For example, the year I turned twelve, I took the idea of a fake genetic condition called Alexandria’s Genesis very much to heart, and my resolution that year was to, no joke, dye my hair silver and convince my mother to let me wear violet contact lenses. I do not need to wear contact lenses, or even glasses. Thus this resolution was quite quickly crushed).
However, since being an adult, I have given up with resolutions, simply because they do not usually work. Sure you’re filled with new resolve and dedication when January first rolls in, but by the 20th, you’ve given up. The running shoes you bought remain unworn in the wardrobe and the yoga classes you signed up for will actually just tick past whilst you spend another evening in bed watching Netflix, but our constant ‘reinvent yourself!’ culture remains happy.
But – and this is the crucial bit – because I have managed to make quite significant changes in my life over the last couple of years, changes that I have for the most part succeeded in sticking to, I feel more confident about the idea of a resolution. But I don’t want to call it that, because then it feels like an obligation. So I have decided (albeit a bit late), because I am the master of my own destiny, to decide which things will be in for 2026, and which will be out.
Carrying around my nice, black, moleskine notebook and a pen will be in. Occasionally, I – whether at work or on a walk or sitting in a coffee shop – will be overcome with the desire to write, but because I exclusively write on a laptop, this is not always practical. By carrying around the notebook (which I bought – Christ only knows why – at an airport, so of course it cost me almost thirty pounds), I will be able to force myself to jot down thoughts on a more regular basis. This will also have the added effect of hopefully improving my handwriting. Carrying a notebook is in.
I have a habit. A nasty habit. One that irritates my girlfriend, mother, and older sister (in that order). I – when bored, spaced out, walking along, doing just about anything that leaves my hands unoccupied – pick and peel the skin from around the tips of my fingers. Essentially, I flay myself. It ends up hurting quite a bit when, for example, washing my hands in water that is slightly too hot. It is also rather unattractive.
My girlfriend, convinced I will end up with sepsis, gently slaps my hand when she sees me doing it. It has even begun to leech into her dreams; once I was awake in an early morning haze and she was not. I was scrolling through Wikipedia on my phone and the tap-tap-tap of my nail against the screen must have sounded too much like me picking for her liking, because it made her – in her sleep - whack me. (She did feel bad when she realised what she’d done).
Anyway, I am going – with my most honest effort – to attempt to stop picking this year. I only started doing it a few years ago, so it’s hardly something that I’ve had to do my whole life. Picking the skin around my nails is out.
I sit here writing on my laptop at my desk. On the wall, just about a little over level with my head, I have a corkboard. Currently on the corkboard are notes to self; essay plans and due dates, an envelope to remind me to pay for a periodical, a sweet note written to me by my girlfriend. But I also have some – well, perhaps affirmations is the wrong word, but – things written down. For example:
EVERY DAY, YOU MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN THE PAIN OF DISCIPLINE AND THE PAIN OF REGRET
Or,
THE LONGER YOU STAY ON THE WRONG TRAIN, THE MORE EXPENSIVE THE JOURNEY BACK BECOMES
and so forth.
I am going to write more of these. I am going to tack them up around my mirror and scatter them about my house. I will write them out and stick them into my purse; I will tuck them into pockets of coats and jackets. I have to start saying them to myself. Why write something if you don’t even believe in it?
(Incidentally, if anybody out there on them world-wide Internets has any further ideas for inspirational little witterings, please tell me).
Believing these things – and thereby believing in myself – is in.
Having no fun is out. Self-doubt is out. Eating one biscuit and then deciding ‘fuck it, seal’s broken, gimme the rest of them’ is out. Feeling bad because I don’t read forty books a year or because I read something less than literary is out.
Working too hard is out, and so is not working hard enough – I need to be in the Goldilocks zone.
Over-reliance on streaming services is out. I was sorting out my bookshelf and found CDs and DVDs that I’d long forgotten about. My laptop doesn’t have a built-in CD/DVD drive, so I’ve bought an external one.
Listening to music that I’ve bought and paid for is in.
Listening to whole albums rather than just the singles is in, or should I say back in – teenage me listened to albums in their entirety all the time.
Writing consistently and well is in. Again, this is a harking back to a time before; during the pandemic I wrote two whole novels is as many months because I wrote two thousand words a day. (I was also furloughed; I want to write more, but I do need to be realistic).
Being calmer, more chill, is in. Eating fruits and vegetables and oily fish is in. Drinking three litres of water a day is in.
Gua sha is in. Flossing my teeth every day is in.
Recognising the beauty and horror of the world around me – duality, yin-yang, two halves of a coin – is in.
(This post was supposed to be done in January. Ins and Outs start now).