Hurry up and wait.

I am both exceptionally lazy, and really bad at waiting. I don't quite understand how those two things square up, but there you have it.

I just can't seem to do anything these days. I'm constantly tired and lazy and never want to really do anything but lie around and nap. But at the same time, I'm incredibly impatient about some things. Especially anything in my head. I know that I just need to give it time to get past certain things, to move on. But I don't want to wait. I want things to be how I want them to be right now. This very minute. All this waiting and being patient crap does not sit well with me. It seems that anything outside of my control cannot happen soon enough, but the things inside my control can wait as long as I feel like it. Which isn't the most logical or sensible approach to these things.

I'm not entirely sure what's at the bottom of all this. Is it just a general laziness, that's come about from years of low energy, low mood, low everything? Or is it something more inherent in my personality? Do I have some sense of entitlement, that I deserve everything I want right now, without having to work for it? Is it some sort of need for instant gratification that's a worrying and depressing sign of our times? I dunno, but it's bloody stupid and annoying. I don't think I was always like this. I don't remember feeling like this when I was at school or university. But then maybe the structure of those sort of systems kept me afloat. Always things to have to do, by a certain time, and they were mostly things that I liked and enjoyed doing, so motivation wasn't as big a problem.

I really wish that I could get those things back - the energy, motivation, sense of purpose that I had from academia. I had dinner with an old friend from university recently, and she said that she doesn't think I've changed at all from our uni days. I don't know about that. Obviously, she doesn't know about my problems so I guess she doesn't have a lot of data to go off of. But it's nice to know that I still seem like myself to her, whatever that is. I guess my personality, my sense of humour, all that sort of stuff maybe hasn't changed that much. And in some ways, as much as it's draining to have to hide my problems from so many people so much of the time, there's almost something refreshing about being around someone who hasn't got a clue about them - it's like I can almost pretend that I don't have these problems and just be myself. Obviously that's only a temporary thing, and hardly a long-term approach to depression, but still. Gotta see the upsides where I can, I guess.

Ironically I think I'm a bit more confident now that I was at uni. I think that's partly just the effect of going out into the working world, being in increasingly more situations where I need confidence and such. And I think it's also partly because of the depression. It's weird, the sort of strength that you get from it. It doesn't feel like it a lot of the time - you feel so tired, so low, so afraid and lonely and unworthy so often. But somewhere there's some kind of 'well fuck the world' sort of thing that comes out of it. A feeling of 'what the hell can the world do to me now, things are already pretty bad' that gives you some sort of weird, quiet strength. And just knowing that I've had these problems for so long now, but they haven't done me in. Not quite yet, anyway. But I know that that means there's some sort of strength and energy in there. Somewhere. I just need to unearth it and put it to good use.

I have no idea how I got to this from the start of this post. It's weird, the way my train of thought can go, especially when I'm writing. I think that's why I need to do this more. Sometimes I do just get sick of thinking and talking about things, and I do feel a bit self-indulgent doing this, like I think my problems are so important that they should be aired to the world. But that's not my intention. Writing seems to help me get things straight more than just going over and over and over them in my head. So it seems like an actual productive thing. As well as kinda cathartic. And for some reason, writing vaguely publicly like this helps with that - when I would write just for myself, like a private diary or whatever, I would go down the rabbit hole of self-hatred far too often. I used it to torture myself for some odd reason. I don't know quite why that is - maybe I thought I had to play up to the idea of a victim or something.

I have to keep reminding myself of this - something has changed for me. Even though I've been feeling quite down and stuck and lost of late, it's still different than it used to me. Only a little bit different, at times, but still. I have to hold onto that and keep reminding myself. I very often don't want to - I want to sink into that pit of despair sometimes. It's perversely pleasant and comforting to drown in the negative. But I try not to let myself do it for long - just enough to realise that that is not how I want to be anymore. And yeah, maybe it's all a lot harder than it seemed at first when I had my 'revelation' or whatever the hell it was. I had so much energy then, it seems, that I don't now. But I'm still trying. Maybe I need to tone down my expectations a bit, but I'm trying. I think. I hope. And I guess that's the main thing. To have hope.