#oneaday Day 837: Mental Fatigue

I'm feeling mentally exhausted right now, and I really wish I could shake it off because it's making daily life rather tiresome. On the one hand, the fact that it's making me specifically want to avoid things that cause me anxiety — most notably social media — is probably a good thing. On the other, though, it's making me fidgety, restless and at times outright panicky.

One of the reasons I'm so nostalgic for ages gone by when it comes to things like gaming and magazines and the like is because it reminds me of simpler, happier times. I think back to, say, my time in sixth form, and all I had to think about was what was happening in the here and now. The Internet existed, but it was an activity in its own right that you did at a particular time during the day (always after 6pm, lest you incur the wrath of the parents paying the phone bill) and as such it didn't interfere with your thoughts throughout the day. It was just another thing you did.

I've often pondered what the happiest time in my life was, and I'm pretty sure it was that specific period of time when I was at sixth form. I was studying the things I wanted to study and that I was passionate about, I had good friends who I got to spend a lot of time with, and anyone who had once caused me grief at school was long gone, because inevitably they were the ones who had gone into vocational qualifications or directly into jobs after compulsory education rather than spending another two years in a school they hated.

Sixth form was a carefree time. We'd go to lessons (except General Studies; I didn't attend a single class for that in two years and got an A in the final exam), we'd hang out in the art room, we'd buy bacon and cheese baguettes from the recreation centre bar on the other side of the school car park.

If we had two or more free periods in a row, we'd walk into town (or bundle into someone's car, once we all started passing our driving tests) and pay a visit to "Richie" at the local computer shop, and my friends would inevitably peer pressure me into buying a game for PlayStation or N64 that I was probably going to buy anyway. Then we'd have a bacon and cheese puff and a Belgian bun from The Baker's Oven, head back to school and wait for the day to be over, at which point we'd go home, play computer games, listen to music, read magazines and perhaps even do some homework.

At no point during that process did the prospect of being anxious about the behaviour of people on the other side of the planet ever enter any of our minds. At no point were we in a situation where our mind would quasi-paralyse us, making us wonder what we "should" be doing at any given moment, inevitably settling on something and vapid and wasteful as reading the idle thoughts of complete strangers. And at no point did I ever find myself thinking "I wish things were different". (Well, that's not quite true. But wishing I'd confessed my feelings to any of the umpteen girls I fancied during that period is an altogether different matter, and we all have regrets in that regard, I'm sure.)

I don't really know how to cope with "modern life" right now. It's not something you can easily just switch off from; you can't just "go back" to how things used to be. Or maybe you can; maybe it is just a matter of self-discipline and redirecting unhelpful thoughts in another direction and prompting yourself to do something productive rather than wasting brainpower and mental energy on things that ultimately don't really matter.

And anyway, I can't completely ignore the few good things that modern life has brought me. It's brought me new friends who I wouldn't have otherwise been able to meet. It's been responsible for a significant part of my somewhat chequered career history. It's helped me express myself and explore my passions. So it's not all bad.

I just wish you could get rid of the bad bits a bit more easily.