Never Enough.

It’s happening.

The same feeling that starts to haunt me about a month into every new endeavour is beginning to poison my mindset. I don’t know if it’s a universal thing, a “me” thing, an anxiety thing, or maybe a mixture of the three, but no matter what new journey I set out on, I am dominated by this feeling.

The paralyzing sense that I’m not doing enough.

It really came out of nowhere, this year, too. Last week, I was flying high: I was super energized, motivated, and felt like I had things under control. Then, on the weekend, I was slapped in the face by exhaustion harder than Ronda Rousey hits one of her opponents in overtime. (Does wrestling have overtime? I shouldn’t do sports analogies; up until last year I thought you could get a “strike” in football. I digress.) Since the weekend, I’ve been overwhelmingly exhausted. It’s not a mental exhaustion, either – it’s physical, which worsens my anxiety and shame about “not doing enough”. My body is fighting to keep its eyes open while my brain screams at me for being tired, insisting that I haven’t “earned” the rest. Or worse, I actually do lay down to sleep, but because my brain isn’t on the same level of “tired” as the rest of me, I toss and turn thinking about all the chores I should be doing. It’s not a fun experience.

I used an interesting word in that last sentence: “should”. I think a lot of my perceived laziness stems from the idea that there’s this set number of things I should be getting done each day. Who is in charge of this agenda, and what authority do they have over me to determine my daily responsibilities, you ask? That’s a great fucking question; I have absolutely no clue. I suppose the easy answer is that I’m in charge of my responsibilities. I do my best to manage my time; I have a weekly schedule on my wall where I write down what I need to do each day. But, somehow, even upon the completion of every item on my list, I still wind up feeling unproductive. I study for my test, but I feel bad for not also completing my design project. I work out my abs and go for a run, but I feel guilty about exercising for only 45 minutes instead of a full hour. I complete a shift at work and meal-prep my lunches for the upcoming week, but it’s still not enough because I didn’t get a chance to do my laundry. I know that’s my perfectionism creeping in, but I can’t stop myself from feeling like there’s this mystical standard of achievement I should be reaching in order to keep my life from falling apart.

I compare my productivity to others’ a lot, too. I use other peoples’ accomplishments as an avenue to further chastise myself for what I regard as my own inactivity. Whenever I manage to question that perfectionist voice in my head, it comes back at me from a new angle: “everyone else is doing more than you.” And I know this is a ridiculous argument, because I have no idea how much other people accomplish every day. But yet, that looming question still taints my reasoning – what if? What if other people are doing more than me? What if I’m not doing enough? What if I am not enough?

Even worse than the shame I feel when I compare myself to others is the terrifying sense that everything I do right now will have dire consequences for the rest of my life. I’m a college student in an incredibly competitive major. I feel like if I don’t find an internship soon, I’ll have no job opportunities after graduation and be stuck working full time at a minimum wage job living paycheck-to-paycheck. I’m a young person at a time of incredible social, political, and economic tension. I feel an like if I don’t read every newspaper and fact-check what I see online and participate in every protest, I’ll doom my future beyond repair. I’m living in a very critical period – both in my life and in the world – and I feel like the only way to solidify any sort of future for myself is to juggle one thousand projects, extracurriculars, assignments, chores, and relationships all at once. I try to remind myself that it’s not that serious, that I’ll figure things out, and that I’ll be okay. But, it’s hard, because I don’t have any proof. How do I know I’ll be okay? I don’t. I can’t. So I continue to work myself to the bone chasing some type of security and I beat myself up whenever I fall short of my own astronomic standards.

Quite frankly, I’m tired. Literally and metaphorically. I’m tired of running my life like a drill sergeant, of pushing myself to excel in every facet of my existence. Also, I’m struggling to stay awake right now. My legs are sore. I need to rest. But I feel like I can’t, because I haven’t earned it. The second I rest, things will fall apart. I don’t know how, but I’m convinced they will. It feels like one night off could make the difference between having a future and flunking out of my program or going bankrupt. It’s scary. As hard as I try, I don’t know how to un-convince myself that rest is equated to indolence and that everything I’m doing is not enough.

Anyone else?