What is the cost of living in a world with a faulty system?
Sanity? If that's the price, no wonder you see so many people losing it even before they hit 30.
Kindness? If that's another cost, then it totally clicks why so many folks are being jerks.
Excitement? If that's part of the bill, it explains why I'm losing interest in the little things, like getting hyped about new movies or wanting to go do stuff outside.
This is why an extra day off for the weekend like today is so precious to me. Because I get to be away from the crazies outside. I get to be away from having to deal with mean people all over the town, and I get to be on my own in my own place, doing the thing that I want to be doing but never really have time to do.
Gosh, did I just take a super long break from writing, like actually sit my ass down to rant about something in the forms of written words? And what does it take for me to really start writing again? Weeks of being exhausted with so many questions that need to be answered?
Here's some serious questions: aren't all of you starting to feel it? The exhaustion that you can't understand, and when you try to fix it, you can't even figure out where that came from? Is it physical? Or is it what's in your mind?
Those people who party all the time, who have all the energy to hang out and talk to people, who travel a lot, who go to the mall every day, who—I don't know, everything that you do that I don't—aren't you tired?
And if you don't, please tell me how you do that, because man, I have been tired for the last couple of months, and I don't know if traveling or a full day spa could fix it.
It's 2025, and the unsettling truth is that many of us feel the world is designed to set us up to fail, leaving us drained and too exhausted to pursue anything beyond basic survival. This feeling is starkly illustrated by the limited time we actually have. Consider this: a 40-hour work week, combined with a daily one-hour commute and seven hours of sleep, leaves only eight hours. Subtract another hour for meals and an hour for essential personal care, and we're down to six. Within that six-hour window, we must still find time to connect with loved ones, maintain our homes, prepare food, and handle other necessities, leaving, at best, a mere four hours for ourselves.
Some people can use that 4 hours to go to the gym, to run, to prepare healthier food, to make art, to do a community-based project, to plan a trip, to hang out with their friends, to go above and beyond to find a place to be in nature, or even to do a side hustle. And for that, I really have a genuine and humble question: how do you do that? How do you have all that energy?
Because in my case, I keep dreaming of living in a remote place, owning a huge land to just farm and grow my own food far from the city, far from the world, so I can live in a hush, without all the rush. And if I'm the only one that feels this way, I refuse to believe that it's a me problem because there must have been something that I have been missing about the secret of going through everything in the world that is controlled by the people who ruin everything.
So, tell me, if there's a way to shake off this perpetual exhaustion, I'm all ears. Because how can one truly feel vibrant and alive when the world stage is riddled with conflict? How can one feel at peace while navigating a capitalist system that constantly whispers of inadequacy and the threat of being swept under?
But if it's not just me, then maybe I have something to say about this being totally wiped out —God, I just want to sleep —state. Because if we can't force ourselves to have that energy those party people or gym buddies have, we can just be couch potatoes and rot in bed if we want.
If we don't have the time to make our art, if we can't get ourselves to run or cook a healthy meal, we can just order takeout and count our usual steps as our exercise. If we feel like we don't want to be around people or we just can't stand being in public space because hearing all those noises makes our brain glitching, we can just be in our own space and put on our favorite music—because we still have to go to work to pay those bills that keep going up—while we're out. If we feel like we can only do so much and go so far, then so be it.
Like Katie Gavin said, "some days you do your best, some days you do what gets you out of bed," and I think that sums up everything I've been trying to write and figure out with all these questions.