Recently, I’ve been struggling with anxiety and stress about bullshit life tasks I need to deal with – mostly those damn fucking windows. And it has been horrible. I felt like I couldn’t do it. But I had to. But I couldn’t. But I had to. Etc. And all the other things in life started to feel the same; all those little tasks (deal with the mountain of recycling, clean the pile of ooze buried beneath it, send the email, text whoever, do the workout, eat the vegetables, order the thing, etc.) which were all totally doable, were accompanied by the same voice: “I can’t do this. But I need to”, etc. Now the big thing’s gone, and I have more time to work through the small things, some of which I will do, others I’ll see on an old to-do list 8 months from now and chuckle at how I still haven’t done that and that it clearly didn’t matter anyway. But after that shit show and all the stress, I’m left with a feeling I can’t find a name for, but is attached to the following realisation: I have no aspirations anymore.
This doesn’t mean I’m depressed. It doesn’t mean I’m unhappy or that I don’t get excited about things anymore: did I stay up researching which fountain pen I might, and then definitely will buy last night? Yes I fucking did. Am I content with the life I have? Yes, I am. And bizarrely, there’s my issue.
“How the fuck is that an issue?”
Well, sadly it’s not, because then I’d have a problem to solve, and off I’d go. The issue, or whatever the neutral term for an issue is, is that I achieved my life goal at 29, and now I have nothing else to do but keep living it. It’s sort of like someone who wanted to make their millions selling a start-up in their 20s, did that, then realised what they were chasing was meaningless and could never have made them happy, and plunges into an existential depression. Except that my goal wasn’t meaningless; my goal was to find a way of living my life in a meaningful way, while ensuring the necessary financial means to avoid having to engage in meaningless activities. Becoming a freelance therapist has provided me this; I make my living by sharing in wonderful moments of human connection and helping people understand themselves better and improve their lives. And I don’t have to sit through pointless meetings or engage in bureaucratic time-wasting. So what’s the problem? Well, I don’t know if there is one. But after all that stress this summer, I realised that, unless I have some crappy life admin task or crisis to attend to, my life feels void of struggle. Counselling isn’t easy, not in any way. Nor is life. There’s no belt-ranking system in counselling for me to work my way up. I do it every week and constantly try to be my best and improve. But I have nothing to move towards. I don’t have any goals.
And that feels wrong. I don’t want to only engage in the universal struggles of humanity vicariously, via other people’s lives, or when I have a mind-fuck problem thrust upon me. But I’m not going to create a mountain just so I have something to climb. I’m not going to chase something for the sake of it. For a while I mused about how weird it was not to be chasing something: how everything in my life, backed by messages from society, was about “what’s next?”. That’s not so gripping for me now. Now, I’m left with this lack of tension, where it feels there should be some, around already living a life I’m content with and having no motivation to change that. I used to imagine myself writing books, competing in martial arts, learning an instrument, learning (many) languages. I don’t want anything anymore. I imagine these things, all now theoretically possible, and ask “what would that achieve?” and I come up with nothing. Without the need to prove something, impress people, change my life or distract myself from it, there seems no good reason to turn these fantasies into reality. Do I want the actual experience of competing in a jiu-jitsu tournament? Fuck no. Do I want to write a book? About what? Again – for what purpose?
But what about Nietzsche and his mountains? I agree with him. To climb does feel human and important. But he doesn’t say what to do once you’ve climbed your mountain. Do you just trudge back down to find another, again and again? That sounds more Sisyphean than Sisyphus; he never lost his goal, never lost his reason to try.
What am I missing? I suppose it might be this: my abstinence from chasing arbitrary goals is well founded – it doesn’t make sense to walk down the mountain and find another, if walking up mountains isn’t what gets me going. There’s no point setting a fire just so I have something to put out. But my dissatisfaction with engaging in the struggle only when something I don’t want to deal with gets dumped on my lap is also well founded. If I keep looking at my life through a wide-angle lens, I can say “Yes, I’ve done it. This is the life I wanted. No need for change here.” But if I zoom in and look at each day, each hour of my life, there’s PLENTY dissatisfaction. All I have to do is check my phone’s Screen Time app to remind myself of how much of my life I piss away in the pursuit of some external promise of dopamine or respite from reality. How many of those 3.5 hours (oh the shame!) could I dedicate to something else? I can feel my inner rebel bubbling up at the hint of the word “productivity”. It’s ok little guy, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’ve been plenty productive already, we’ve won that war, so you can go back down and enjoy your nap. I’m talking about spending the minutes, hours and days of our life in ways we find pleasing and good for us (me). Just like how a “satisfying” meal doesn’t need to be “healthy” by any external standard, other than what we judge as good for us, I want to believe that I can incorporate activities in my daily life that I find satisfying, without the pressure attached. I don’t really know what that will look like, but it feels exciting. There’s been something quite enjoyable about writing in this way, as if to an audience, compared with my usual journaling. Maybe I’ll write a blog. Maybe I won’t.
Other Thoughts 