oh wise friend and mutual, how do you find inspiration again when you feel discouraged? despite having lovely friends and the distraction of a silly little crush, last semester of college is leaving me feeling beat up so I figured I'd ask for some advice <3
My dear, I've been turning this question over and over in my head this weekend because I want to be able to answer this as precisely as I'm able to.
First of all, I want to tell you that you are very much not alone in this feeling- my second-to-last semester was actually my hardest, in terms of work AND material, and I felt so pulled in all directions and told that I had to try my best in each class and work harder in each individual one than any of my others, all of them clamoring for my attention at once. I'm thankful for it in its own way, because I think I got the intended effect- my soul grew in leaps and bounds more in those five months than maybe any other semester of my life, but the growth was at the cost of a terrible aching and scathing of my soul, and that was very very hard to deal with.
I think primarily whenever I'm trying to deal with overexposure to being busy, I have to go back to the basics and ask myself- why do I want to do this? What is it that is so important to me that I have to accomplish this, even if it is at great cost to myself?
For a degree, that might be a really simple answer- you might want to finish it because you want to get employed, which is perfectly fine! It's a stepping stone for you. It might be to make someone proud of you, which is also completely worthy! For me, it was always important that I finish my degree as kind of a proof of life, for me in my teens who couldn't imagine it, but it was also just because I loved what I studied, and I was good at it, when I am so rarely good at most things. I wanted to be able to prove something tangible of the faith of the people who've believed in me so far, myself finally included in the end.
It might sound silly and simplistic, but just being able to put your finger on what your motivator is to cross the finish line has been extremely helpful to me in my own life, as just an initial way to get yourself off the ground floor and able to start feeling your way back to hope again. This is also less of a clean-cut opinion; usually when I've tried to approach this before, I'll make a list of my reasons out on paper, sleep on it, and read it again in the morning to see if I still feel the way that I did when I wrote it, and if not I revise it. But for me, usually I have a hidden realm of energy that I can tap back into once I understand my motivations and reasons for sticking to something with loyalty, and when I make them concrete and real, I can attack my work with renewed focus.
Another part of this, one that I found very rarely discussed in my realm of academics at least, was what I like to call the enrichment zone of our brains. Often when I go through a time that's beating me up, I end up more like a workaholic than anything else; something weird happens in my brain, and I figure that if I keep working and never stop, there's no possible way I can ever fail. This, while being the result of some silly fear-goblin in my brain, is usually what leads me to my shrimp pose crouched over my desk, blinking awake after five hours to my brother asking me if I want to eat something, or in a more concise way is what I call when my brain wins over my soul.
For whatever reason, there's something to do with my specific hyperfocus problem that makes it very easy for me to go haaard in one direction and try to prevent failure by ignoring everything about myself and diving into my work. While this can work for a very short amount of time, burning the candle at both ends shows a decline in quality of your health very quickly (trust me) and thus your work, and so one thing I have to adhere to is- I have to do things that tether me to the world, to tangible things.
This might look very different according to your tastes; but the bottom line is, you have to do things that tie you to something real and existent in your world, else you start scratching the sides of your enclosure and nobody's happy! Especially in our schooling nowadays that is almost entirely conducted via projectors and computer screens, you need things that are far away from mortal ambition and are just little things to scratch the itch of your brain.
For me, the things that tie me down are a huge grab-bag of different things because I have a million interests that I cycle through throughout the eras of my life. That thing for me right now is keeping a journal that I write in every day, even if it's a single sentence. Another thing is reading physical books, which when I really, really need to read I tend to put my phone on the other side of the room and listen to one of those library ambience videos so my brain has a bottom line of action going on to keep me engaged. But probably the thing that fulfills this part of my brain most when I'm busiest is cooking. I got very, very into cooking about four years ago as a way to bond with my brother, so for me it's filled with many good memories, but it's also a very tangible way for me to care for myself, to be able to go through the motions of something I know that will result in something good. Feeding just yourself is also sometimes hard to justify when you are busiest and most empty-feeling, so I would counsel you that even the act of going to get food with someone is something that always makes me feel more alive, more here, so I hope you can act on that whenever you need it too.
(It would be remiss of me to not also mention textile crafts, which are my mother's main way of dealing with her brain goblins, but as I kind of lost my textile abilities big time during the busiest years of my education, I'm not sure how applicable they are! But they are an excellent way to ground yourself also.)
But! Since you specifically asked about inspiration, I want to tackle that. I wouldn't say that there's any one good way to be able to inspire yourself to keep going forwards, and I myself am always failing at this (I am Very Cowardly at heart, let me tell you!) but since I am a writer foremost in my heart, let me go back to that. There's a post that goes around a lot that talks about how each poet has one emotion that they draw on for their body of work, and I think about that a great deal, because I think actually that often changes for a person across their life. For me in this particular iteration of myself in the past few years, I know that the emotion that drives what I create is wonder, and in response to that wonder, gratitude. I mention this because I believe that wonder is what is often missing from our lives once we get used to a place, and we've made a place for ourselves in them.
After getting over the threshold of something being new, we like to settle in, and then the things that used to scare and frighten become normal, and then they become plain and part of the scenery of the life you're living. But from what I can tell, wonder is able to transform the everyday things in our lives from what they are to what they mean, and when we do that we say thank you to those things for existing, for allowing us to be near them and to witness them.
The thing that makes me wonder, more than anything else, is always going to be music, and it's why I will always be counting the seasons of my life by what I listen to. To be able to claw my way through the hard parts of life, I have to decorate that time with something that helps me put some lyrics in my pocket to process all of it, and help it find its way to be enfolded into my life, my memory. More than anything, I think what helps me keep creating is learning to wonder, to be in awe of things as much as I possibly can, to try and create space for that in myself and try to treat it well when I do experience it. There's a trick to it, but once you try to pay attention to the things that make you wonder, they become very clear- walks around my campus while skipping to my music often made me wonder, as does listening to a symphony in person, or when I made my friends laugh all at the same time, or moments when I walked into a room and smiled at somebody, and they smiled in return.
More than anything, when you are going through something harsh, it's my belief that to make something unbearable bearable, you have to find a way to make something in that time that you'll miss. I have a perennial, sometimes unbearable habit of looking for moments of beauty in times that make me miserable, making it so that I miss them even when I was living it I was praying for it to be over, and while I think that goes too far in the wrong direction I still would say that if you try to record the good things about life as you're going through it, even if it's as simple as taking a picture of something you eat that you love, or the sun in the evening, that's what makes life bearable.
Hold onto your friends, they're what makes life survivable, and they make it survivable because they make it meaningful- other people are the biggest source of wonder in the world, plus I absolutely would not have finished my degree had I not had my friends to work with, the powers of parallel play are never to be underestimated. Even if you are only being near someone else who is as confused as you are as to what to do, in my experience that is a huge relief to know that they're at the same level as you. Friends are what make the little stupid pinprick pains of school bearable!
I also had a rule during my year of online school, which while it was an incredibly lonely time was very rarely full of solitude because eeeeveryone was constantly talking to one another, that I would have one hour every night to turn off my computer and my brain and do whatever I wanted. I used to have dance parties at 11PM before I went to bed, twirling and jumping around my room because that was what I needed to do to stay present! And I think that in itself is an incredibly useful tool is surviving something that seems to sap all your strength- make sure you are not ignoring yourself, but give yourself the time as often as you can to let your mind wander, let it dream. Like that one post says, you're your oldest childhood friend, so make sure you're phoning in to say hello!
Beyond all of that, keep your eyes peeled for the evidence that people believe in you, because it's everywhere- even if it's just your friends waving at you, or the cashiers that wish you good day, or the chit chat of people before and after test taking, I do believe we're all cheering for you to do this (and if they're not, I'll fist fight them). I believe in you! And I hope that you can find the force in your heart to be able to believe, too.
Sleep as much as you're able, eat well, make sure the tiger in your brain is kept happy, listen to some tunes and look at streetlights, eat dinner with a pal, and I know you'll get through this, my darling.
Best of luck, and much love <3
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