Am I sick?

Sitting at my office desk, suddenly I feel a sense of emptiness, absence of direction, especially when there’s a lot going on around me. There is so much I can involve myself in but I don’t feel like doing anything. I want to write so much, read, speak, share so many things but I end up wasting time either watching Netflix or merely exploiting my senses through the vast world of internet. Every 1-2 months, I get this feeling where I feel unhappy and anxious even when there’s nothing wrong with my life. A major reason I believe is that my job is very less demanding. I don’t have much responsibilities and therefore, I end up doing nothing all day.

It is a mental state that comes and goes. I can’t really understand it completely. I feel like I lack something, which I don’t, once I rationally think about. I feel less important, less valuable and emotionally down and out. This can become a trigger for other negative thoughts in my life. I have noticed that it is a common pattern in my life, for a very long time now. Many times, I don’t recognise it. Sometimes I am so involved in life, even if I feel this way, I ignore it and move on. But it is those days when I silently sit at my office desk in the morning with nothing much to do. I sense the lack of motivation to do anything.

What triggers this feeling? Over a period of time, a lot of things that I have to do or can do pile up in my head. I might not be doing those things due to distractions or mostly due to procrastination and laziness. So now, I have spent a lot of time doing nothing. Then I feel guilty of not doing those things and start thinking how much time I’ve been wasting. This turns into thinking that I’m useless and can’t do anything. Which then drops me into a deep pit of anxiety, unhappiness and demotivation. I feel this way for as long as I don’t consciously tell my mind to shut up and start doing the things instead.

Why am I like this? I think it has become a habit over the years. Innately, I am not a self motivated person. Therefore, I get discouraged very fast. So now, I always need external motivation to keep my life moving. Like motivation to get up in the morning, cook dinner, write a blog post, or even do my job. I can categorise these things into two feelings- procrastination and dislike. The things I dislike doing makes me not want to them like my job and cooking dinner. But the other things like writing a blog post or reading are somethings I love doing. I end up not doing them due to procrastination.

So yeah, at the end of it I am the loser. Not my blog, or the book that I didn’t read or the job that I dislike. I’m sick in a way that I hate myself for the things I don’t do and then get demotivated because I didn’t do them.

On the contrary, I am not always like this. There are chunk of days where I am self motivated to carry out tasks that I wouldn’t do otherwise. The thing is that once I decide to do something with all my heart, soul and mind, I do it! And then no one on this earth can stop me or demotivate me. On these days, I get my strength from only one thing- Jesus. Unlike human beings, He doesn’t stop motivating me after sometime, but it’s me who stops going back to Him. He persuades me to be my best in whatever I do. He tells me to take care of my health and body and hence, cook good food for me.

There it is. I answered my own question! Am I sick? No I’m not. It’s just that I’m human.