This is all just word vomit and I have not edited it yet. I just wanted to make sure I memorialize my thoughts and ideas for moving forward from this rut. I'll edit it later. Maybe.

I AM TIRED OF BEING SO SELF-AWARE AND REFLECTIVE AND PONDERING ON WHY I FEEL NEGATIVE FEELINGS AND HOW MY TRAUMA AFFECTS ME. I WANT TO MOVE FORWARD AND EMBRACE HAPPINESS AND POSITIVITY RATHER THAN DWELLING ON NEGATIVE FEELINGS.

This is quite possibly the first time in a very long time in which I have felt motivated and inspired, and overall just positive. Over the last two weeks, I had taken time off work to cater to my mental health – I was exhausted, depressed, and burnt out. After one weekend, I was at work for two days before I had yet another nervous breakdown and left work on the verge of tears out of sheer frustration – not with my job, but with capitalism in general. I have gotten so tired of having to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and only get 2 days a week off – to which those two days aren’t even spent on myself, but running errands, doing chores, and trying my best to stay committed to any plans with friends/family.

I want prevention, not treatment.

Me being me, I took to Google to “research” why I was feeling so incredibly exhausted, especially so this time around, and looked up chronic exhaustion, fatigue, why commuting makes me so tired, burnout, capitalism & mental health, etc. Of course, the one consistent thing I could find across any article was to practice gratitude, mindfulness, meditation, positivity, give myself grace and a break, etc. I’ve grown tired of trying to find a good therapist because based on my experiences, the best they can do is provide coping mechanisms for whenever I feel negative feelings. I know how to cope, I know how to process my emotions, but that’s all that therapy has taught me. Over the past 6 years of trying different therapists, I’ve learned that my feelings are valid, how to ground, breathwork, coping mechanisms, recognizing my emotions, how to self-soothe, etc. What I truly and desperately crave is how to be happy – how to prevent the frequency of these negative feelings in the first place. Prevention rather than treatment. Which is ironic because that was the biggest thing that was drilled into me as an animal science major – prevention is easier than treatment. Preventing fleas and ticks is easier than treating tapeworm and Lyme disease.

So instead of trying to practice mindfulness, gratitude, and meditation like I usually do for like a day then stop, I decided to try to balance out anything negative in my days with something positive. For every episode of my true crime podcast I listen to, listen to an episode of something positive. For every crime/thriller movie I watch, watch a comedy or something positive/light in general.

Incorporating more positivity.

This was sparked by one of the articles (or was it an Instagram post?) I read, which discussed how access to social media and the internet constantly bombards us with negative news. Every headline is about politics, economy, war, crime, etc. which – while we might not think affects us much – being constantly exposed to negativity does affect our brains. The article/post further suggested balancing out all of the negative news with positive news, and suggested podcasts to listen to such as Happier with Gretchen Reuben, The Science of Happiness, and The Good News Podcast. (For the life of me, I cannot remember the article sources because I just went through SO many articles. I might quite possibly be just consolidating all of the information I read, thinking it all came from one article – Sorry). So, for the past two days on my commute home, I have been listening to these podcasts, and knowing me and how bored I get with things really quickly, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually became engaged, attentive, and interested in these podcasts.

Observing your surroundings.

In an episode from The Science of Happiness, the host talked about a (clinically researched) method in which participants were asked to write down, each day, 3 things they were grateful for in nature, 3 things they were grateful for in society/the community (morally positive traits in human behavior), and 3 things they were grateful for overall. It incorporates mindfulness with gratitude and – my favorite – people-watching/observing. During my two week impromptu hiatus from work, I made an effort to be back in nature. I went to two new parks, a local arboretum, the beach, and I just sat and enjoyed the environment. I found beautiful places right in my own town that provided quiet spaces from the hustle and bustle of society – of capitalism, which is what I wanted to get away from.

During this time, I also reinforced my independence in being able to go to these places alone and not needing someone with me as an excuse to go in the first place. If there is one single thing that has been a constant passion in my life, it’s my love for nature. But here’s the twist – I don’t like camping or hiking, I just like being in nature. Being surrounded by the natural beauty of the world – the animals, plants, weather, water, everything. I can sit and watch a squirrel or duck for 30 minutes and I’ll be so enamored.

I noticed this first when I was taking a break from work the day before my hiatus and I desperately felt trapped. I needed to escape. I was neglecting my body, my diet, and my wallet. I went to pick up lunch from the nearby cafe in my work’s business plaza and I saw two squirrels chasing each other on my short walk. It was the first time in a while I had seen squirrels in the plaza and just seeing them for a short 5 or so seconds made me so much more happier. It made me smile and laugh. It struck me that it was the first time that I was genuinely happy in a long while. When I picked up my lunch and exited the cafe, both squirrels were gone unfortunately, but it made me realize that I so love nature and I need to spend time getting back in nature.

Being able to go and find new parks nearby, by myself, and just watch the wildlife or look at the views reignited a sense of peace within myself – calmness, happiness, mindfulness, and gratitude – all the good things that supposedly lead you out of depression. Being able to feel the sun on my skin rather than being stuck inside an office building the entire day; being able to breathe fresh air rather than the constantly recirculated office air; and being the autonomy to do what I want, when I want and not being constricted to a work schedule. It was exactly what I needed. And of course, too short of a break.

Take back your time.

Throughout my hiatus, I actually spent the first 1.5 weeks just trying to figure out what exactly was making me feel burnout/depressed. Was it the chronic trauma? That’s what I thought it was the past year – manifesting into physical symptoms. But it was already a whole year later and I still felt the chronic exhaustion, so what else could it be? I fixed my sleep patterns, no longer dealing with insomnia, and the chronic exhaustion persisted. I finally realized it was just the impending frustration every single day of having to survive under a capitalist society. The constant soul-sucking 40+ hours a week just to get by, just to make ends meet, with little to no extra time, energy, or money for myself, and just the constant cycle repeating. I felt so trapped, constantly running on fumes, always rushing from one place to another, making appointments, being on time for work, etc. Cue further Googling for how to get out of burnout/capitalist fatigue.

The answer: Take back control of your time and make efforts to slow down. To me, the way this was phrased made it click for me rather than “practice mindfulness” or gratitude, the same recommendations over and over. While I could tell myself to be more mindful, be more observant, be more grateful for the things around me, it was the idea of allowing myself to slow down and take back my time that really stuck.

S L O W D O W N .

So for the last half week of my break, I finally realized that I do not need to rush from place to place. I can take my time and do things on my own time, when I want to, and I don’t have to rush to the next priority. This was only possible by taking time of work, completely, for two weeks because it gave myself the time to really relax, slow down, and tune into what I really needed and expand on the time I had. I started with just enjoying a cup of tea in the morning with breakfast and my book (a guided meditation practice on the Insight app – morning meditation with coffee).

Less screen time.

I have also been actively trying to avoid my phone as much as possible because of the abovementioned realization that being exposed to negativity constantly does affect our brains. Even if I am not actively seeking negative news, it gets fed to me in my social media feeds without any effort on my part. Normally, I go down rabbit holes and get sucked into endless spirals of researching online about a single post that interests me and before I know it, 4 hours go by and I still haven’t eaten dinner or showered, and I forget what I was looking up in the first place. It’s a domino effect.

So, my solution has been to prevent my exposure overall. Technology has advanced so much faster than our brains can adapt. Our brains cannot process all of the constant information overload (positive, negative, or just anything!) that is being fed to us through the internet. For example, the rabbit holes I constantly find myself going down. It’s overstimulating. We cannot adapt to this volume. While it’s amazing that we have access to all of this knowledge at our fingertips, I never realized that it is overstimulating and affects my mental health.

Being out in nature has supported my want for being off my phone because it forces me to put the phone down, drive, walk around, and then I get enamored by the beauty in nature. While I do take photos and share them during my time out, I’m not stuck playing a game on my phone or researching; I just share the photos and put my phone away, and I get to share the beauty and appreciation of nature with my friends and help brighten their days with beautiful views or funny things that animals normally do. (One of the coping mechanisms that one of my therapists taught me in the past was that when I’m feeling sad – Google pictures of puppies [or whatever your favorite animal is]. You’ll immediately start feeling better.)

’24 for 24′

The podcast episode I listened to on my commute home today was from Happier with Gretchen Reuben, which talked about this ’24 for 24′ challenge concept in which you are to write every day of 2024 – and it could be about anything. It could be for 2-4 minutes or 24 minutes. Listening to the hosts read how their own viewers were implementing the challenge inspired me. I’ll probably start small and just try to make a habit of writing 2-4 things everyday that made me happy. I liked the other prompts that their listeners were implementing and I thought: Maybe I could write about what made me smile that day. I have been actively trying to smile more – a trick that I’ve been told will actually make my brain believe I am happier because my body says so. I could write about what I’m grateful for that day, what made me genuinely smile that day, and then I thought – February. February’s usually all about love and self-love. It could be my theme for the 24 for 24 challenge for the next month – self-love. But it’s so overplayed. February, Valentine’s Day, love and self-love. How about selfie-love? I could take a selfie everyday in February and write about what made me smile that day, or what I like about the selfie I took, or just anything that day that my selfie wants to reflect.

No Spend February

I had also recently listened to an episode about their ‘No Spend February’ challenge, which inspired me to also try this challenge and really tune into where I spend my money and made me consider what I really like to spend my time on as well. A theme I’ve noticed in Gretchen’s podcast isn’t that her listeners should do these things because they’ll make you happier, but that we should try these different things to help us discover what makes us happy. The 24 for 24 challenge will help me discover what makes me smile each day and reinforcing compassion for myself by seeing myself smile each day. No Spend February will help me figure out what I typically spend money on and whether I just buy it to buy it or buy it because it actually makes me happy and I want it. A listener suggestion for their No Spend February was to keep a list of things they wanted to buy during that month and revisiting that list after that month was over and seeing if they truly needed to spend money on it.

‘No Spend February’ and ’24 for 24′ got me thinking of daily prompts I can do for myself (another episode from the podcast of doing things for yourself rather than for other people) to promote more positivity in my life.

Sunday Sweets

Going out and trying new dessert places or coffee on Sundays because I always have room for dessert and coffee.

Made My Monday

Writing about what made my day that Monday. Because we all hate Mondays and I need to balance out that negative attitude with appreciating something that made my day.

Wednesdays

I thought I could use Wednesdays to rebalance my week, with the same mindset of balancing my negative thoughts/moods with more positives one. Reflecting on what I brooded on Sunday – Tuesday and rebalancing those thoughts with something I found positive that day. For example, I told a friend that I am attending a funeral all day on Saturday. He mentioned that it was supposed to be one of the few upcoming days where there isn’t supposed to be rain. So even though I’m attending a funeral, at least I won’t be rained on and sad. I also keep joking with another friend that my horoscope says I’ll meet my future husband in February. I joked that what if I meet my future husband at this funeral – the morbid irony. So while I am aware that I am attending a funeral for a former coworker / friend this Saturday, at least there are small positives that could occur that same day. I could meet my future husband and it’ll be one of the few days that won’t be raining before it rains for a whole ‘nother week. Small things to find in negativity. (My brain is scrambling right now trying to make sure this doesn’t enter toxic positivity territory. Work in progress.)

Social Saturdays

I’ve decided that I’m dedicating Saturdays ONLY for socializing with friends. I tend to spread myself out thin and try to appease everyone and see everyone as soon as I can, which leads to a lot of low social battery that requires 2+ weeks to recharge. This was sparked by the podcast’s “Treat yourself like a professor” episode, which suggested setting “office hours” for yourself – dedicating specific time for a task. There was also a suggestion to “reward” yourself with a “grant,” like telling yourself you won a $500 grant to spend on coffee and a pastry this year to motivate yourself to go to a coffee shop and do work. Another idea was giving yourself a sabbatical (I absolutely loved this idea!) When you recognize you need a break and instead of taking time off because you need it, give yourself a sabbatical to intentionally spend time on something you want to do. The example given in the podcast was that a writer experiencing writer’s block, so the writer gave herself a month sabbatical of just reading. Rather than thinking of it as having writer’s block and succumbing to it as a failure, rewarding yourself with something you love to do (such as reading) and dedicating time to that.

At the end of the sabbatical, the host asked the writer how her sabbatical went and the writer said, “I was granted an extension of my sabbatical!” Rather than saying she needed a longer break (which in capitalist terms means you’re not trying hard enough or whatever), she was granted an extension. It’s not to say it’s a change in perspective that magically makes a difference, but I’d say it’s rather the act of reframing in a way that makes most sense to you. This made sense to me, especially because I had just been thinking about how sabbaticals should be more common in the workforce! (Fate, is that you?) So I thought of giving myself a social media sabbatical – dedicating time to be off social media completely. I had gotten off social media successfully once before, for about 6 months, and I remember being quite happy and unbothered during that time. Although, I was extremely exhausted which prompted my absence in the first place. While I still dealt with chronic exhaustion during my social media absence, I at least wasn’t feeling worse by all the negativity and information overstimulation.

/End Rant

These are the ideas I had for myself so far. I just wanted to make sure they were memorialized somewhere and not just abstract thoughts in my head, bound to get lost. I do also want to make sure I do something for myself each day that I look forward to, which made me think about what I truly get lost in and hyperfocus on, what really makes time go by in an enjoyable way for me – not like doom-scrolling and feeling like I lost time. Things like crocheting (which made me think that I should crochet myself a shiny Umbreon [my favorite pokemon] for my own birthday this year), puzzles (although I realized this takes a lot of mental effort so probably not so much anymore), writing, reading – more things off-screen that truly make me enjoy my time. I also bought a paint-by-number kit that I am excited to try! Maybe painting is my call.

I guess I accomplished my ’24 for 24′ today because I wrote for an hour. Yay! Rewarding myself with dinner and shedding out of my work clothes into comfy clothes.