I a tired of looking at myself, at my own face. My insides roll and flip just slightly with distaste whenever I catch a glimpse of the plain, somewhat agitating person glaring balefully back at me. I’m sick of my short hair. I’m sick of my dull skin. My too-long, skinny arms irritate me, as does the lumps and bumps on my figure that I think only I can see. I’m bored with Twitter and FaceBook and websites and weather and playgroup and morning tea and shopping. I feel as though I’m searching for something that isn’t even real… an answer to the weltschmerz, the boring mundanity of life.
I’m tired of being in my own head… some days it feels uncomfortable.
Some days it is uncomfortable.
I wonder if feeling never quite good enough is perfectionism and a tendency to be too hard on myself, or a resonance of truth. If we’re all OK, why do we invest so much in changing our habits?
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| Bored, bored, bored… taken roundabout the same time I wrote this post. |
It’s just boredom and restlessness, I tell myself, and that’s OK; it wasn’t really that long ago that I would have sold a large torn off chunk of my soul to feel such mundane, average emotions as these, dissatisfaction and itchy feet that ache to walk paths untread and unencumbered.
To be more accurate, it’s probably an itchy soul. Itchy and irritated, infected and oozing. Searching for a balm, a rinse of saline, something to cleanse and invigorate.
I’m writing this at one am on the Friday night of the Problogger conference– thanks again to Chan’s Yum Cha for sending me. I’m in Melbourne. I love and adore most everything about Melbourne, I’ve been looking forward to coming here for weeks now…
I thought Melbourne would be enough, to scratch the itch. To make me feel some kind of alive again, some kind of separation between the exhausted weight of my body to a lightness of my core.
This time, Melbourne’s not enough. I don’t know what I need– an elusive ‘something’, some intangible quality to leach the colour back into life again.
Maybe it’s just boredom, fatigue, the need for a good nights sleep.
Maybe it’s just me.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
as we're entering Winter here, you must be ending? I know come Feb/March when winter is ending I get like you just wrote about. we call it cabin fever. maybe you have cabin fever.
I don't have any answers. I've been going through a little bit of a metamorphosis of my own. I'm getting there, but I feel this constant state of urgency – almost panic. I've left it too late. I'm not going to have time to change me. My 'inside' has changed, but is there enough time to implement everything, now that I'm finally ready.
I don't know what the answer is. I'm not sure if restless is better than panicked. I spent so long wanting to feel something. Now that I do…
Beautiful Lori,
The only thing that has worked for me is purpose. Finding a purpose and sticking to it. Because life is fucked up, and boring, and stupid, and irritating without it. For me, that purpose has been This Place is Yours. If you think that might be yours, too, I'd love to have you in ANY capacity on the direct team.
Love to you,
Seraphina (you can call me Seema)
x
Restlessness is a horrible feeling. Especially when you're restricted, or you can't seem to find what it is your soul is looking for.
I do hope that you did enjoy Melbourne, even if it wasn't enough this time.
Go sky diving
nothing like a good adrenaline kick to make you feel alive 
I know this feeling. I call it my 'icky feeling'. Where you're crawling out of your skin but you can't get away from yourself. You're fed up with the world, the TV, the media. It's awful. I'm learning to just try to be with it when it happens, and withdraw from the things that really drive me crazy, like social media.
I've been going to the gym lately and doing yoga. Helps to zone out.
Maybe make a list of 'shake me up' things you could do. Go and dance in the rain. Something dumb and odd you don't want to do, to wake your body up even if your mind is unwilling.
I love your blog. I've visited before. You're one of the reasons I've recently started one. Please keep writing through the blah!
Well, you might be sick of looking at yourself, but I am NOT sick of hearing from YOU. I didn't expect for people to resonate so strongly with me at Problogger – but you and Grace in particular, rocked my socks (they're long. And black). If you are ever thinking about changing your scene and scratching your Itchy, you are always welcome down here.
Kx
Lori, I can't help but think that yoga would do your heart, soul and body wonders. <3
I think that accepting ourselves isn't just something that we do one day and then cross off the list – it's something that we have to work on all the time. Some days are on, some are off, some days we just burst with sheer awesome and others…not so much.
I always hold myself up to ridiculous standards, then berate myself for being unable to meet them. I always look at my flaws in comparison to others, forgetting that they are probably doing the same thing at the exact same time. Every day I hate myself and then re-fall-in-love with myself all over again.
Don't feel bad for having on off day. It happens to everyone and it will probably happen to you again next week and the week after…
Just don't forget to fall back in love with yourself again soon.
I don't know about anyone else, but getting past this itchy, scratchy, unsatisfied with everything, boredome, irritability is just about the most amazing breakthrough. For me, it was getting to realise that I just didn't like myself as I was and then changing into someone I now like. Getting to the place where I love myself, still on that journey!
oh Lori, we are all bored, fatigued and need more sleep. Our world flood's our sense with images, and dreams of lives we don't have, leaving us feeling inadequate about the lives we do have. It is totally unfair. It is incredibly hard to switch off. Maybe this is the calm, before something amazing?