I’m having a bad day.
I feel drained, apathetic, and am just generally beating myself up. I feel like I have wasted moments of my life that I’ll never get back. I feel like I’m not living up to my potential. I feel like I piss away opportunities. The hours and days fly by me and I didn’t take advantage of them… instead I just burrowed into my blankets and sucked down another beer.
It seems like all my friends are doing great things. They are starting businesses, traveling the world, creating and inventing a better future. I am filled with all types of ideas and interests. I want to learn German. I want to start a children’s book series about our bicycle travels. I want to do some modifications to my bike trailer. I could exercise. It goes on and on and on… but I can’t seem to find the motivation. I often feel like it is too late to start or it will just be something that I fail at. Sometimes it feels like trying isn’t worth the effort because my history shows that I’ll just give up. I’ll get one super productive day in and then just spend the rest of the week dicking around on Facebook, wasting time on Hearthstone, and napping my life away. I can start a thousand projects and never finish one. Hell, I don’t even get 15% into one. My passion and drive just disappears after a day or two.
I know I am being irrational in a lot of ways, but that doesn’t make it feel less real or painful or depressing. I know that I see my friends doing a lot simply because I have ~2,500 Facebook friends. The law of large numbers virtually guarantees that something awesome is happening every day to a friend of mine. And I know we are kind of encouraged not to share the bad news in our lives. Everything is supposed to be fucking happy all the time… but damn it, sometimes I’m not happy.
I know that part of the problem is chemical. I’m recovering from overuse of serotonin after rolling this weekend. It always drains me for a couple of days. It always passes. But it still fucking brings tears to my eyes as I think about the time I’ve wasted… how much better my life could be if I stopped slacking. My hormones are already on a monthly cycle with periods of moodiness, insomnia, and near depression hitting every month.
Logically, I know my life is pretty awesome. My multi-year bicycle ride is starting up again soon and with it comes greater health, the three months of laziness burning up and firming my body and mind. With that health comes greater happiness as well. With that adventure comes the feeling that I am actually doing something of value in my life (even if I am the only one that gets any value from it).
I don’t know. I’m just having a shitty day. I just kind of feel alone.
Wandering Oak 
What I admire most is the love you put into the world. Some days that may be just snuggling Higgins, other days it is a blog post that is very sincere and relatable for many people, and even other days it is “hard work” and contribution to a project of some sort. Your effort, big or small, makes an impact on someone, somewhere, somehow.
🙂 Thanks Blayne. You are wonderful. Thank you for the kind words and motivation. It really does help a lot. ❤
Sounds like a bit of FOMO. Facebook used to do this to me all the time. Few people share things that align with what they are *typically* doing; they just share the highlights, and it feels like everyone is out there being awesome except me. I tried quitting Facebook entirely, but then I was too disconnected from distant friends. What I’ve found works for me instead is the News Feed Eradicator extension in Chrome. You can still message people and go see their posts individually, but the news feed is completely blocked. No more jealousy-inducing travel photos, no more blood-boiling links to political junk, nothing except a mildly inspirational quote. If you haven’t tried it before, I recommend testing it out for a bit and see if it helps: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en
Awesome, thank you so much for the resource. I also resist quitting Facebook for those reasons, I do use it a lot to stay in touch with people. That extension could be a good addition to the one I have now that limits my Facebook time to 1 hour per day. Thanks!
I came across your blog from a mutual friend from CofC, way back when you first started the first cross country tour. It was at a time when I was mostly bed ridden recovering from a broken leg and I needed to live vicariously. At the start, I didn’t think you were going to make it and thought you’d surely die in the desert. I have followed along reading posts on your thoughts and travels for years now and there have been many times of growth and many wonderful experiences you have shared. I can honestly say this is the only blog I have read with such consistency and for such a long time. Your writing has continued to become more compelling and the random interjections of your thoughts and ways for self improvement has lead me to think about things from a different angle and at times re-examine my life. You have introduced me to many interesting books, websites, and topics to explore that I most definitely owe you a debt of gratitude. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for the kind words Gavin. It is really encouraging to hear from people like you. I have often considered giving up on my blog, or maybe making it private, but comments like this make the decision to keep it public easy.
I honestly thought I might die on some random desert road as well. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I think that ended up being a good thing. I learned a lot about myself and my ability to improvise and survive, and I learned a lot about the kindness of strangers. It really is a beautiful world out there.