sunshowerdandelion | 13.04.25 (1): Difficulties (Reply)

I don't think I'm doing so well at the moment. It's mainly work: I thought it would get better after the Eid break, but it hasn't. I think I'm going to list them and see if it helps sorting things out a little.

Part of it is that I feel a lot more cynical towards people and towards tasks, and so I'm very much tempted to just tick them off a productivity board rather than engaging with anything fully. Unfortunately, this has spread to writing and reading.
I keep engaging in a weird form of doomscrolling that's basically reading bad news, which, to be fair, a lot of the news in general seems bad at the moment. But given my job, it is a requirement that I read the news a lot.
I don't have a counterbalance. My friends are busy at the moment, and the one I want to be close friends with is practically unreachable because she's busy. I'm not sure how much I scale on loneliness, but not having a friend to unload onto, to talk things out with, has unbalanced me. My ex was my best friend. My other ex was my other best friend, and so I don't have any at the moment.
I have to travel internationally soon. This sounds rather silly, but I rather dread travel prep, all the hotel bookings and expensive flights and all, and the not having anyone there to rely on sounds horrid. Also, air travel rather scares me. But there's a sunk cost here. I will have to travel internationally, most probably.

I really want to do things to lessen my dread, but to be honest I think I'm already doing a lot. I'm stuck in a strange holding pattern at the moment. I guess I do have a few things I can do rather quickly:

Get travel sorted out, quickly. This involves tricky negotiations which will have to begin tomorrow.
Read news a little less, or confine it to several spots of the day.
Talk more online, especially in writing communities. This is very much a stopgap solution, but I need to build a community somewhere other than work. Also, resurrect my other Discord profile, which is easier said than done. I also need to get more involved in the writing communities since I made a lot of friends there, which have been rather neglected.
Do writing exercises. I think sometimes, my brain is just not up to the task of writing a new section of a scene, or drafting anything. Sometimes I need to just write in a structured manner outside of my WIPs. I think for this reason I will do writing exercises instead of just roaming around when my brain doesn't want to do things.

I guess that's a small list of things to endeavor! Best of luck to myself.