2025-09-03
It's been a while since I've written anything here, and there a few reasons for that. First, I got depressed again. I thought I had gotten over my last episode but was only okay for like a few days but then I spiraled again into another episode. At this point I think I'm depressed more than I'm not, which sucks ass. The second thing that made me not write in here for a while was that as a consequence of my depression and other events, I found it hard to write something that was personal and publishable (to my standards anyway) and couldn't muster up the strength to write anything. I wasn't even jotting down notes or anything. But that's also a consequence of the fact that I spent most of my time asleep, which is usually how depression goes for me. If I didn't have support from my family, I'd probably be homeless and more severely mentally ill than I already am. It makes me sad to think about that. I've also become more fed up with the world in general. Most aspects of society disgust me and I despise going out and doing basically anything. I only go out to the gym and to restaurants to get something to eat and I'll maybe socialize once every month or two. What's sad about that is that my situation isn't unique and actually much more normalized than one would like to think, particularly for those under 30 years old. Young people in general are way more risk averse than older people were when they were younger. Not to mention they're also way poorer.
I know I had other ideas I wanted to share here, but nothing really comes to mind immediately. I have a pocket notebook I keep at my desk for the purpose of jotting down quick thoughts, but I haven't found myself using it at all, really. It's mostly because I don't have a habit of writing down quick ideas like that and also because I feel like I think too quickly to write certain things down. I don't say that to brag, because thinking too fast too often isn't useful. Capturing brief thoughts in a notebook throughout the day would most certainly slow my thinking down and I feel like it would be easier to write through ideas instead of thinking through them super quickly and then forgetting them. I don't want to run into the problem I see from "second brains" or "personal knowledge bases" though because from what I've seen, most people write a bunch of stuff down, but then never really go back and read it. Anyone who uses those platforms seems to suffer from an intellectual vanity: they would rather use the platforms to give the appearance of being a deep thinker rather than actually thinking deeply. They become too focused on the medium and not on any substantive thought. Now, I can't say for sure that most people who use things like Obsidian or Notion don't read through their personal wikis or whatever, but I feel like that has to be the case because those people have more fun adding stuff than actually reading through it. Wikis are great for sharing a base of knowledge on a certain topic, but a personal wiki just doesn't seem that useful. If you're not going to remember the stuff that you wrote down anyway, is there really any use for even remembering it?
I think it's cool and important for the brain to regularly clear its cache, so to speak. To me, it's a good thing that not everything stays remembered. Most of the things that were useful to someone 5 or 10 years ago are no longer useful to keep in the mind. Whether it's personal memories or knowledge, a lot of that stuff isn't really important. I know many people who are adamant in documenting their lives through photos or posting on social media or whatever, but to me that seems really stupid. Looking back on the past like that is not useful in any way and feels more self-centered and masturbatory than anything else. I don't remember most of my past and quite frankly, I don't want to. People I've known for years will tell me stories of things I've done in the past and I don't remember most of those events. I don't want my past influencing me because there's nothing useful it can provide. Usually when I think about the past, it always degrades itself into some kind of mental self-flagellation. To me, the present is the most important thing to think about. I want to know how I can operate now because that's all that matters to me. It's important to embrace change, and I always strive to grow wiser so that I can tackle whatever happens next.
Weirdly enough though, I still get anxious about the future. I don't think there's any way to avoid that completely and quite frankly, it's much easier to live in potential than in action. I know it's a common thing for people to daydream about hypothetical situations and I do that a lot too, but I also know that it's not really a productive way of thinking. If anything, daydreaming is just a way to regulate one's self emotionally. However, it's also an easy way to spiral into certain patterns of thought. I don't want to do that anymore. I want equanimity in my life, but the desire for that equanimity is what creates the anxiety about my future and getting out of that paradoxical loop is difficult. Understanding it is a big reason why I write here. I hope that more patterns of thought will reveal themselves soon and I can observe them and use them to grow. Until then, I will have to sit with my current self and do my best to keep going.