Woke up this morning absolutely paralyzed with anxiety because I only have ten days to write a five page paper comparing Aristotle’s perspective on the soul in the second book of De Anima with Plato’s account of Socrates’ perspective on the soul in the Phaedo and that is honestly not a thing that I ever thought I would give this many shits about.

I really do not like this feeling.

The sensation of absolute dread in my stomach, the experience of physically not being able to move because of the possibility that I will create a trashy paper (translation – not get an A) and then my entire GPA will shrivel up and die and I will have to run away to the deep woods with a bag of rice and stay there forever because of how utterly unhirable and worthless I am to the entirety of <<< capitalism >>>

and this paralyzed feeling makes it impossible to even remember the prompt for this paper particularly clearly, let alone think about how I’m going to answer the question, let alone focus on reading and re-reading roughly 100 pages of content necessarily to feel like I understand this material for certain, to feel sure I haven’t misunderstood

let alone begin to use my brain to think, to criticize, to find things that don’t make sense, to analyze and synthesize and connect and compare and brain thoughts and words together into something that makes coherent sense

and the knowledge that I’m not making progress on my assignments makes it worse.

I am capable of staying here

[Stuck, worrying, unable to move or do anything other than this thing that I think that I ought to be doing, unable to walk or sing or be with friends or partners, unable to read or watch TV, or do anything other than scroll through a bottomless pit of memes (tiny sparks of dopamine)]

all day. And then the next day, and the next. Until the very last panicked hours, at which point I’m shoved out into the clearing by the sheer pressure of passing time.

And this really sucks. There are absolutely moments when I’m not sure if I want to do this anymore.

The worst part is that I usually do alright. Objectively. On the surface of things, those grades look okay. Not 100’s on everything but I will fucking take it.

And that makes all of the feelings I feel seem – unsound. Ridiculous. Laughable, almost.

And I do feel satisfied and happy in the moments when I realize that I create something that somebody else thought was well made.

But the cost of that satisfied feeling? It’s so much. Almost too much.

I am not sure what to do, but I hope you’re doing okay this evening. 🖤