the unfolding of many truths at once
on burnout and existential dread and writing into the void and somehow feeling like myself again
Hi lovelies,
I’m finally feeling like myself again.
if I’m being honest, staying on track of this newsletter has proven to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. not because I don’t want to do the work, or because I’m not inspired, or because I’m not writing on the regular either way. it’s like I was telling my sister last week: sometimes it just feels like I’m writing into the void.
and even as I type these words, I can’t help but shake my head a little. what, you mean adding yet another project into the assemblage of 1249824123+ interests, hobbies, burgeoning side hustles, and ultimate goals that make up the de facto truth of my life wasn’t my brightest idea?
I’m an Aries with a Capricorn stellium. so sue me.
it’s taken me a long time to even come close to factoring in what it means to be a human being, and not just a human doing. (certainly, I know I’m not alone in this!) over the past few years, I’ve pushed myself and pushed myself and pushed myself. graduating from a MFA program in 2020 will do that to you.
that was then—and this is my now: full-time tech job. novel in progress. getting Reiki certified. signing up for an online UI design course for shits and giggles because I want to learn new skills, and I’ve always been interested in the world of design.
starting this newsletter.
so.
I guess when I took off for Paris, I was a little tired.
so much so, in fact, that I didn’t instantaneously feel that special brand of vacation joie de vivre that traveling usually slaps on like a holographic band-aid solution for the mundanities of everyday life. the kind that makes you go: “I could really see myself living here!” as you cavort, utterly and gleefully convinced, down one cobblestoned street after another.
okay, so it’s not that my trip didn’t inspire me—it’s that the reaching toward inspiration felt slower, a sweet and syrupy dripping down, not like the clichéd-but-still-apt lightning flash I normally experience the moment I step foot on a plane.
this is likely caused by a number of things, above-stated interests and projects and goals notwithstanding.
top of mind is the ever-prevalent sensation of burnout blurring out the edges of everything. and not in that aesthetically pleasing manner brought on by a single glass of wine too many. more like that “brain fog billowing in on the coattails of anxiety to effectively obliterate your ability to function” kind of way.
you know, like so many of us are feeling right now.
continued pandemic malaise. work malaise. political malaise. we’re-the-only-species-paying-to-exist-in-a-riot-of-billions-of-galaxies malaise. all dredged up to come together in an overwhelming swirl of quotidian existential dread that is both exactly what the capitalist powers that be (as I often refer to them as) want, and that seems nonetheless impossible to avoid at times.
and and and.
yet I find myself returning again and again to the “what if.”
what if a better world is possible? not only possible but inchoate. right fucking now. and intransigent, too—in that it’s already on its way. or, and this depends on what Universal Law you subscribe to (wink, wink), it may even already be here. (where are my Law of Assumption babes?)
what if we can have nice things?
what if the immensity of this moment is all the more raw and exhausting and beautiful and full of possibility because of its fleeting nature?
and what if we free ourselves every single time we remember the power we have over our own minds and states of being?
what if, indeed. it’s not like that’s what keeps me going, or anything.
xx
Kimia