She Says

For the greater part of my adult life, I’ve always had this lingering feeling of guilt whenever I’m “doing nothing”. I have this irrational fear of ‘time running out’ whenever I’m laying around, not doing anything particularly productive. This blog is a result of that exact feeling. While on most days I try to drown this feeling by unhealthy binging dramas, on some days I give in to this lingering feeling of angst. And this isn’t something that is exclusive to me either. While having conversations with my friends, they’ve all expressed this same angsty feeling.

Recently when I was backtracking my thoughts trying to figure out why exactly was I feeling this way, I realized something that is a concurrent problem with people my age. Somehow we’re all convinced that we’re too old and hence “running out of time” to achieve all the things we want to. Whenever I look online and see a handful of people younger than me or around my age doing things they love and become “successful”. Impulsively I start comparing my very-normal life to theirs and feel dejected. I think recently with the surge of social media engagement during the pandemic, we tend to lose sight of what’s real and what is fabricated. I’ve caught myself comparing my life with someone on the internet I don’t even know and feel dejected. I tend to neglect the fact how each life is so unique. Just because I’m at a different place in life doesn’t have to mean that it’s less vibrant. I didn’t even realize that so many things were wrong with this mindset until I was texting my friends and we talked each other out of this pity-hole.

For instance, let’s start with the part where we feel like we’re too old and hence “running out of time”. I was talking to my sister recently about how I’m 21 already and still have so much to achieve to which she replied with a very calm “you’ve got time”. Such a simple, mindless sentence and yet it felt like a dramatic eye-opening moment (cue the dramatic music with multiple camera angles, and intense zoom). Since it’s the most popular excuse, I’m gonna let the pandemic take the blame for this. As obnoxious and condescending it may sound, being locked up at home has been a bane for some. For this period of my life, I was expecting to meet more people, make more memories and build more experiences, I’m locked up at home scrolling through Instagram and losing the sense of any ‘social life’. It feels like the world has stopped but time is still moving fast. I have basically no memory of the last two years- no timestamps, no highlights. Then again I think it is important to realize this is not something that is unique to me but is a worldwide crisis that I specifically have no control over. Then why do I still have this feeling of angst?

I realized that it’s because of the predefined societal time stamps that we’ve been pressured to live by. The early twenties are to live your best life, mid-twenties to start getting independent and late twenties to “give up the independence”. And if we’re not following these societal standards, it feels like an anomaly, which is what is happening to me. In my penultimate year of college, I realized I didn’t really care about my degree and wanted to do something else. Even though I know that this isn’t something extreme and that I shouldn’t lose my mind over it, I can’t help but have this unsettling feeling of being left behind. “What if I still don’t like what I do?” “What if I was better off with my college major” “What if I flunk again?” “This is my last shot at changing my field of work” “I don’t deserve to slack off for a bit and should keep hustling”. Being in a period of transition and with the world being stuck in the middle of a crisis, I feel like I’m glitching. I’m not living up to these “predefined societal time stamps” and can’t help but feel like this is an anomaly. I shouldn’t have to wait till my fifties to “earn” my period of rest. I shouldn’t feel pressured to live a fast-paced and competitive life.

Not that I’m trying to endorse the habit of “slacking off” but leisure shouldn’t be stressful, no? I shouldn’t have to feel like I “earned” my time for rest. Hustle culture has become so predominant that anything other than that feels like “slacking”. Funny how getting some extra time to rest has caused me more stress than peace, such as the paradoxical act of leisure. Funny how it forced me out of my space to write this rant. Anyways, I don’t really have any final thoughts to conclude this with. I just hope that people don’t feel guilty when they’re resting. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break. You shouldn’t have to “earn” your time to heal or rest. It’s okay as long as it’s not a self-destructive mechanism.

A.N. – Having said all this, I just wanted to make it clear that I’m pretty thankful and aware of how lucky I am to be safe and healthy and in no way mean to disregard anyone’s feelings. I empathize with all the people that have lost loved ones, fought a hard battle with the virus or just had a hard battle in general as a result of the pandemic.