How To Feel Like Shit

On a 2020 Thanksgiving trip I went to Kansas City to visit my best friend, my former college roommate of three years. It had been over a year since our last encounter. My expectation was a joyous time like we had in college i.e. lots of frolicking. But there was a proverbial pea at the bottom of my bed.

The pauses between activities, the moments where I had a chance to reflect I felt sad. Lost in a place I thought I might feel at home. It was a disorientation - why am I feeling this way? It starts with a string of undesirable days.

I've complained a lot about work in previous posts, but I have a confession. Work was a scapegoat. To understand what I mean we' ll have to breakdown the difference between undesirable days and work.

Undesirable days have three attributes: little nuance, forced actions, and a majority of the days spent with these two attributes. It's a no to the following questions:

Little nuance: Am I doing activities that are fresh and interesting?

Forced actions: Am I doing activities that I want?

Majority of my day: Am I feeling energized at the end of the day?

Work, as I would have defined it in the past, was time and actions exchanged for pay. Something I had failed to understand was that those two did not have to be the same.

My anger at the never-ending barrage of email and empty meetings was not an inevitable hassle but my choice to live with those attributes. I let those conditions flourish even outside of my work. Even in Mexico, with the removal of work I still felt this same of listlessness.

Pessimism can be a dangerous drug. Make no mistake, pessimism is helpful. It provides relief and defense from feelings that occur when you've had many undesirable days. Taking a "hit" of pessimism, you can hunker down in conditions you don't like because the belief is that it will likely get worse or be the same anyway. Its repercussions (complaining and feeling trapped) outweighed the despair of not living the life I wanted.

This wasn't an exclusive reaction to the COVID pandemic. When a string of identical days happened prior to graduating college, I reminded myself there was an end. Pushing through pointless school assignments and uninteresting classes until the next semester or year, things would be different.

But once you reach post graduation that endpoint jumps to death, if you let it.  In COVID this was cemented. Every day was another rerun of the same Harry Potter movie marathon. Strip away the magic, the British accents, and any semblance of good vs. evil and that's what my life was.

Up until this point it goes like this Me-> Consecutive undesirable days -> Pessimism as a dominant state of mind -> Me + Dreary Outlook -> Consecutive…

Pessimism made the situation I created tolerable. But when I changed up my location, actions, and who I was around, despite my expectations, the residual effects of my long-held defense was still there. I had not changed - just simply changed the wallpaper.

When you're not living your values, you have undesirable days. Mine just happen to be a swath of nuance, autonomy, with days largely revolving around these two. But I suspect it applies to most.

If we can orient ourselves around these attributes, then bingo we've got what's called a life. We'll call them games. Work is a game. Doing your taxes is a game. Life is a game. Why am I feeling this way? I never defined the game, but had the game define me.

I'll borrow this from James Carse - the games we want to be playing are those where the only goal is to continue the game.

This, undoubtedly, takes courage.