It’s been a while since I posted something here. Not sure was it just laziness, sort of a creative block or an apathy that may be simply labeled as a middle age crisis?
Honestly, I don’t think it was any of these.
Sometimes you just need to tune out. You need to give yourself some time to think, to assess your life, to catch your breath. Even if you don’t do it, life will make sure you get reminded of it.
It started almost a year ago in the form of the pain on the right side of my chest. First, I thought it’s just an unpleasant feeling because of some wrong moves during the training. It was supposed to pass in a few days.
But it didn’t.
Instead, it started to steal some of my breaths and alerted me to do a medical check up. All of my results were within usual ranges and x-rays didn’t show anything unusual. A good reason to calm down.
“It could be stress… we are all going through some difficult times.”
This is how the doctor explained it referring to the past two years and all the backs and forths with the pandemic. Could this be it? Stress?
Nerdy, as I usually am, especially when it comes to analyzing myself and my behavior, I started to think about the stressors in my life. And it didn’t take longer than a fraction of a second to realize that I could perhaps name this pain by its true name.
Cognitive dissonance.
I would not go into scientific definitions here and would rather explain it in my own words, by my own example.
It is like a lack of harmony in the musical piece that was never intended to be written. A passive aggression in a conflict without the true opposing side. An accidental leading role in a movie that has a completely wrong plot. A show of an acrobat on a string juggling in a vacuum between your reality and the truth about who you really are. An ideal of contempt for complacency and an undeniable truth of a complacent reality.
That day took me down the spiral where lyrics of an old Matchbox 20 song started to sound as the melody of my own life.
“All day starin' at the ceilin' makin'
Friends with shadows on my wall
All night hearing voices tellin' me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for somethin'
Hold on, feelin' like I'm headed for a breakdown
And I don't know why…”
Except, I had a pretty good clue why.
Gazing through the window I felt another January passing by so damn quickly, just like the thick white clouds in the sky. They seemed like some kind of a marathon runner or perhaps a sailing boat that just caught a good wind and continued to effortlessly slide on the big blue surface of eternity.
I didn’t know why (or maybe I did?) but this reminded me of Seneca.
“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
I know that the past two and a half years have been difficult for the majority of the people around the globe. Many people missed going to the office, meeting colleagues, and socializing. I didn’t really miss it that much and I have fully leveraged our home office policy. Naturally, I somehow believed that this pandemic didn’t have that much impact on me.
I knew where I was sailing. And it seemed pretty smooth. Still, the compass in my chest alerted me that there was something wrong with this cruise.
I’ve been into a studying journey that lasted for nearly two years. Two subjects per semester and I loved every minute of it. Exploring novelties, ideating and experimenting by applying some new practices and methodologies, moving forward and improving. That is who I am.
End of last year I took a short break from courses, lectures, case studies and seminars. Just to relax. In reality, this break allowed me to realize that I was approaching the cliff.
I was not really overworked but I was tired and exhausted.
I was not lacking motivation but I was completely uninspired.
I was not stuck but I was seeming fully trapped in the status quo.
I was not burned out yet but I was definitely a little unwell.
I needed a change.
“… but I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know, right now you can't tell
But stay a while and maybe then you'll see
A different side of me.”
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