Here’s the short answer: the last several months have been incredibly difficult. I started seriously studying and took two of the four GED segments before hitting a severe roadblock with math and temporarily giving up. I did several months of piano lessons before hitting a roadblock and temporarily giving up. I moved and two months later, I still haven’t fully adjusted. That on top of depression from trying to “catch up” to people my age in such a short span of time put me into a really severe burnout. I tried to delay the crash as long as I could, but it wasn’t enough. I knew no one was really reading this anyway, so I just gave it up as soon as I started to feel overwhelmed.
I guess that wasn’t such a short answer, but it’s hard to condense that into just a sentence or two. Now, if you’ll bear with me, I want to talk about this idea of “catching up” because it’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time.
I stopped going to public school in eighth grade. I had two very turbulent years of bouncing between schools before covid hit. I’ve had chronic migraines since I was 13, but my chronic illness and widespread pain began in 2021. I found a school that was perfect for me, but it was too late. I had to leave because of my physical illness.
I always worried about lack of proper education and how it would affect me, but I had hoped to get my GED and start going to school around the same time as everyone else. It didn’t happen. English and history are quite easy for me and I enjoy them, but math and science require years of foundational building blocks that I’m just missing. I was able to pass the science test with a college ready score, but I still don’t feel prepared. When it comes to math, it just makes me feel so incapable and I get very quickly overwhelmed because of how much I’m missing. That’s the reason I haven’t finished the GED, even though I was meant to do so in July.
The other issue, GED aside, is college itself. I want to go into some kind of music, both because I enjoy it and there’s more flexibility than history—which was my original plan. The thing is, I’ve only been playing the piano for a few years and most of that time I was self taught. When you add that to the fact that music is quite widely seen as an impractical choice, it’s hard not to feel doubt.
What I struggle to fully reckon with is that, no matter what I do, I’m never going to have a traditional career—quite possibly any career at all. The choices I have are nowhere near as diverse as those that your average person has. Comparing myself to them is not so much comparing apples to oranges as it is apples to potatoes. Yet, of course, I always do it anyway. I doubt I’ll ever fully be able to accept it, no matter how many hundreds of times I get told that everyone’s path is different.
That leads us right to burnout. I turned 21 this year, and it’s really compounded the amount of pressure I feel to “catch up” with other people my age. I didn’t expect to still be here at this point and it’s made me feel like I’m in a race against the clock to at least start college before the age the average person gets their bachelor’s degree. I was scrambling to start this fall, now I’m trying not to trip over myself as much to get in for this spring.
I was doing so much for so long and never taking a moment to breathe until it was too late. It’s been about two months of the depressive slump I’ve been in as a result of that. I’m starting to feel less exhausted overall, but I can’t bring myself to even sit down at my keyboard most days—let alone try and study math, something that makes me feel like my brain is shutting down the second I don’t understand something.
I’m trying to just rest, but it’s very difficult. Well, it’d be more accurate to say that I’m, for the most part, physically resting but still mentally tying myself up in knots every night. Most days that ends up with me feeling physically restless, but not having the mental fortitude to do much of anything. That, of course, only ends up frustrating me more.
So, you may be wondering, what the hell does that mean for this blog? The answer to that is, I’m not entirely sure yet. When I made the schedule of a discussion piece or article a month, it already felt stressful to me even though I just started. The biweekly updates less so, but it still felt difficult to find enough to talk about twice a week.
I don’t want to drop this explanation and fuck off forever, regardless of if people are reading or if I’m just screaming into the internet void. I want to try and start doing weekly updates, likely on Thursdays, rather than biweekly, and not having a set schedule for articles, if you can even call them that. I enjoy writing longer pieces about disability in general, but it can be really emotionally exhausting.
With that in mind, I’m considering expanding to discussing other things. I’ve talked in the past about my crochet and, as I’ve mentioned here as well, piano playing. I’ve made two crochet patterns of my own—one for fingerless gloves and one for a book sleeve—which I thought about posting and I’m dabbling in writing my own music that I’d love to eventually share. I’m not particularly great at video games, but I do enjoy them so that’s another topic I could talk more about. As I said, I don’t really think anyone is reading this anyway. If that’s the case, why should I restrict myself to any one thing? It’s my blog, why can’t it be my rules?
In conclusion, my life has been kind of a mess and this blog’s future is somewhat uncertain but, if you’re reading this, I’d love for you to stick around. Take care and goodbye for now.