Every time I return, I’m always a little bit surprised to see that the ol’ cardboard box is still in the corner, just as I left it.
This most recent hiatus may’ve been the longest, I don’t know. How long the hiatus from hiatus...ing will last I likewise don’t know.
I do think I was able to make more progress this time around, though. I took a break from a lot more, such that it may actually be qualified as a break. I also didn’t fight it this time. Thanks to various aspects of myself (ADHD et al.), I am really driven to have things going on, and being understimulated is just the absolute worst. But this time, I just kind of accepted that I needed to take some time off from as many things as possible.
It started more as an attempt at a reset button. I’d been increasingly aware of how many of the things I do throughout my days were things I was doing just to stay occupied for a little while, maybe stave off those terrible feelings of boredom/understimulation. In other words, “this is something I can do right now and not hate it” was often a good enough reason in and of itself. Meanwhile, it wasn’t ever clear why [whatever] met this criterion or why it was better than anything else that might also meet this criterion at any given moment.
This also meant I was perpetually in a low-level panic mode, with little to no ability to really evaluate *why* I wanted to do anything I was doing. As I thought more about this, I realized too that this (i.e. “I can do this now and my brain is happy with it”) had been a major decision-making heuristic for me for so long that making more meaningful decisions about where to direct myself/my life, whether short-term or long-, was not really a thing I knew how to do.
I’ve also spent the time finding a better antidepressant medication and undergoing a course of TMS (whereby a pulsing magnetic field is applied to the pre-frontal cortex to increase plasticity and thus, hopefully, emotional regulation). I’d say these have created some space for me to start building new mental habits, frameworks, and the like. Unfortunately, I remain far too dependent on stimulant medication to even *want* to get anything done, much less actually do it.
And it’s this “want” that is currently the crux. There’s a They Might Be Giants song called “Dead,” a line from which is:
...or I’m still alive and there’s nothing I want to do
While realizing my decision-making process wasn’t good is an important first step, I haven’t yet been able to actually replace it with anything else. This will of course take time, but the challenge during this process will be not falling back on old habits.
I also have to be more aware of my own energy levels; sometimes my not wanting to do much of anything is because I simply need the downtime. This is fine, it’s just weird that a lot of the things that I used to do when I just needed a break don’t really appeal to me like they used to. Still trying to figure that one out.
........
Anyway, something I’m trying to do a bit more of is engage with various communities I’ve dabbled with over the years. I’ve long been pretty conflicted about “needing” other people, howevermuch I would pay lip service to the idea that no one’s an island. I don’t yet have any idea what this will actually mean in practice, but I’m at least acknowledging that this is something I do actually need.
We’ll see.