When urban ennui is all too real

Since the past few days, I have been experiencing something I never understood before: the dilemma of having tonnes to do yet no motivation to sit and get it done. Work deadlines are looming, with the eternal wish to do better and learn, a number of life-altering decisions need to be sorted through, an examination is coming up, and all the while I need to meet people, talk to them, eat, sleep, bathe, clean, read, text family and friends, commute, all these mundane tasks that need to be done. I don’t feel a dearth of time, of which there seems to be plenty some days, and none at others. I want to do nothing, but also feel the burden of not doing anything. Am I being lazy, I ask myself, and yes is the answer I get. So I start lo-fi hip hop in the background and get to it. Sometimes I get in a flow state for a half hour or so, before lapsing into distractions again. Need to book this trip, need to pick up my coat from the dry-cleaners, need to arrange this evening with the guy I like, need to meet my best friend, so I get to all that, thinking I’ll concentrate again when all this is done. I log out of my social media accounts, hide the icons in folders, applying my behavioural economics learnings to self-control. I procrastinate, rationalising with ‘I don’t have the right pen’ or ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I need to move, my butt’s tingling from sitting’. The only time I let go of all this is when I sleep, which I get a comfortable amount of more often than not. But the alarm hits and I snooze it twice before getting up, like everyday, and away I go on the bus again. Some days like today, when my boss is not in the office, and is not sitting behind me all the time (which is a major stressor for me some days), I get a respite from having to pretend to work when all I want to do is run, run and run. I feel like crying some times, like right now, and don’t know why. Everything is okay, actually better than okay, it’s rosy with rosy future prospects and rosy places and rosy travels. Yet I feel a tug some days to go back to our sitting room from when I was 14, curled up in the sofa, watching TV, most likely Discovery or some English show, with the food being served to me, not having to worry about that greasy pan I need to wash, or the bulb that needs changing. Unaffected emotionally by politics, climate change, loneliness, getting everything I needed and most of what I wanted (of which there was little). Living in a comfortable home, a big home with spaces I could hide into or be alone at, a terrace to lie on to watch the clouds go from bunny-shaped to a dotted fieldscape, from light to dark, and then see the stars, reading and dreaming of places to go when I ‘grew up’. There are days when I want that back. I was so very uninspired and unambitious, just followed a non-resistant path of study, never having explored any other. Unadventurous in action but a neophiliac at heart. Always the ‘sweet’ and the ‘nice’ one, never mean to anyone, at least not intentionally. Mellow. I am not that person anymore, and it is okay, I know, but I sometimes wish I could be her for just five minutes, just for an evening on the roof of our home. Things are more complex now, I feel lonely at times. I have a big number of friends but not one person that I can call mine and me his. Yes, (sarcastically chuckling), maybe that is what I actually want, my guy, who’d listen and be listened to, to cook for and read with, to be indoors with, with a cup of tea on rainy days, to go eat with, to be in our PJs and facemasks together. To tell each other of our friends, to have our own sets of lives and dreams, yet celebrate each other’s little victories and share disappointments, to pick up books for each other that we think they’ll like, and snacks they want to try. Yes, I do have one guy in my mind when writing all this, but as life works out, I have not yet seen that I am the person he wants to do all this with. So what shall I do? Keep asking him to hang out, when he has never once started a plan with me, has not once shown any interest in asking me to accompany him in things he knows I’d like. And he is not to know that I like him. And now back to the want to do nothing, I have important documents for my really ambitious PhD applications that I need to write and get done in a week. In 7 days. And I will. Because writing all this has made me realise that there are some things I want but cannot control today, but there are a lot others that I can indeed control and move forward with. I have realised that I need to prioritise, be selfish with my time and resources, and get down to it. So I shall. After pee break. So long!

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