Mental health, college and writer's block
Lately, I haven’t been writing. At all. At this point, I even wonder if I can still call myself a writer. This is not the first time I’ve experienced writer’s block, but this is the first time I actually feel horrible about it.
Writing has helped me go through some rough times I had at the beginning of the year. Family issues. Seeing how therapeutic it was to me, I promised myself I would write every day (or as much as I could), and this worked for some time.
I’ve written a lot in January, more than I’ve ever done in a month. February wasn’t great, but at least I wrote something. But then came college.
As always, the beginning of college was slow. Nothing to do, few things to study. Even the teachers were tired after the vacation. And with so little to do, I procrastinated. I could have been writing, but no. It seems like everything I went through in January came crashing down into my life, and I wasn’t okay. To be honest, I’m still not, but back then, I could barely think about anything, let alone write.
I drowned myself in an old habit, an old addiction: the internet. And again, YouTube was my best friend, music was my life background, and short videos, my dessert. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent with my face locked into my phone, but the bad feeling I got every time I was doom scrolling my days away wasn’t as bad as the crashing pain reality brought. And I wasn’t ready to face it.
But then came the real monster: my professors’ inability to divide everything equally into the four entire months we had, and of course, their thought that they might be the only teacher in the semester.
Depressed, addicted to my phone, and now anxious, with barely any time to breathe. Filled with tests and “homework” to do, afraid I would go down in three subjects, which, thankfully, I did not. Quite the opposite, this was overall a great semester, grade-wise.
Of course, I’ve been through a lot, with college and personal issues, but you might ask what I’ve learned with all of that? That it can get worse. What I already knew? I shouldn’t procrastinate. It always turns into a snowball, and I always have to figure out how to stop it at the expense of my mental health. But will I put this into practice? Probably not.
I normally don’t enjoy talking much about myself on that level, but what else do I get to write? Not the hundreds of ideas I have written, or the dozens of projects I’ve started and never get the time and will to write.
