Being Constantly Busy To Doing NOTHING

Have you ever been so busy with tasks that when you’re finally finished, it still feels like you need to do something or that you feel like you don’t know what to do anymore and can’t seem to relax?

Hi I’m Noemi and I feel like I don’t know how to relax and constantly feel like I need to do something because I’m not used to not having something to do. This blog post is going to show where my mind has been the past month and basically my mental health.

As COVID cases continues to go on and even rise, so does the uncertainty surrounding things in our lives. We all know that our lives have not been the same since March (or earlier); that our daily routines have been altered to some degree and it takes a while for some of us to get used to this change more so than others.

For me, the past month or so has been tough, I’ve been depressed. It’s been over a month since my final exam of the MLA/T program and a month since the college said that they’ve been trying to rearrange our practicum; weeks of constant waiting for word about our practicum and receiving the same answer each time. It’s also been a month since I’ve been let go of my part-time job since the company decided to close majority of their stores. I’ve been debating about getting a new part-time job but then I don’t want to tell my potential employer that I had no idea when my practicum was going to start and then them not hiring me because of this uncertainty. I’ve also felt like I HAD to post something for this blog and for my Instagram page, yet felt like I had no inspiration to post anything. I want to go to the gym or meet up with friends in different cities but can’t, or rather don’t feel comfortable doing so because of the virus. It feels like I should be relaxing and just chilling, but it feels so hard to do so, like I’m forcing myself to do so. Just overall felt no motivation, no interest to do things.

Instead of doing anything about my feelings, I’ve been doing nothing the past month, or rather it’s felt like nothing. I’ve gotten so used to balancing school, work, going to the gym, my social life, and my social media pages that now that I don’t have some of these things, every has gone chaotic for me.

Chaotic? Clustered? Disorganized? Unsettled? Overwhelmed by the lack of stuff to busy my mind with?

I haven’t felt this way since… September 2019. It’s not as bad as then but it definitely has some similarities to that dark time in my life. At least now I’m able to recognize these feelings and try to stop myself from spiraling too much. It just feels so uncertain and there’s so many things I feel like I need to do but I don’t want to do. There have even been some days where I wouldn’t want to leave my bed because I just couldn’t, I didn’t have any motivation to do so. I even thought about going back to therapy because of these feelings and my mind just not being at it’s best. Then I remembered what I learned in therapy.

I feel dumb that I forgot about the things my therapist and I have talked about and the different skills she gave me during our time together. I even have worksheets in my journal that I could look to to remind myself of what I can do when I feel these feelings. So I’ve been going through them this week and realized how these skills and practices benefitted me back then and how they could really benefit me right now. I will be implementing them more and practice them so that they become habits so that I don’t forget them like I did.

What I’ve been doing to try and ease my mind so far and to show myself that I am doing things, not just nothing:

• Talk to friends and my sister
• Making small goals. For example:
  • Do at least 5 pages of my MLPAO/CSMLS exam review by the end of the week
  • Journal at least 3 days of the week
  • Do 50 push-ups at least 3 times a week
  • Listen to at least 2 hours of my audiobook and at least one podcast episode
• Go outside and doing something for myself
• Try to do things I know I generally enjoy such as playing Switch games, computer games, and reading

Not gonna to lie, it’s still hard to do these things, but they’re small goals for my to try and do to feel better. It’s the little things that count. Even though I’m not as busy as I used to be, I can try and do things that I believe can help me feel busy. Hell I think on the outside it looks like I’m just constantly busy doing things, just for me these things feel like they aren’t enough. Probably in a future blog post I’ll share a thing that my therapist had me do for two weeks that made me realize I do a lot of things even though it didn’t feel like a lot.

Anyways this blog post is pretty personal but it’s something I’ve been thinking of saying and just felt like I should show where my mental health has been the past month. Maybe someone can relate, who knows.

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it! Stay safe and I hope you have a nice day!