maya's nebulousness

almost the end, but (painfully) not quite

[Winter is dragging its feet all the way to mid-march, and I can't take it anymore.]

I'm blaming this seasonal transition for making me feel stuck in a liminal state, a sense of constant incompleteness. The routine of this university semester has solidified to the point of becoming redundant, much like the last five I've dragged myself through. There is something unique about the in-between of seasons, as if the world is holding its breath, taking an indefinite pause, before becoming whole. I'm embodying the suspense of this transformative period; I'm on the edge of my (metaphorical) seat for early summer travel plans to unfold.

I'm making it sound negative on purpose because I'm frustrated by this academic cycle. I only hate it when it becomes redundant, fatigued by my courses as we've been turning around the same subjects for four months now, and the boredom is settling heavily in my chest. Usually, it reaches that point when it's almost the end of term and exams are about to begin, but not yet. This is key: "almost, but not quite".

This cycle I'm stuck in looks like this: I pick something up (an interesting idea, a creative project, an academic essay, a blog post), then immediately stack it with the rest in a corner of my mind. Progressively expanding this stack that is doomed to eventually overflow and collapse, forcing me to pick them all up again. Being a student requires falling into these rabbit-holes. I must constantly consume and digest ideas to create something new out of them, proving I have unique thoughts, etc.

Now comes the time to dig myself out of this hole.

  1. Stop consuming more content, focus on what's already on my mind.
  2. Brainstorm on these ideas, find connections between them. They don't emerge in a vacuum, but are all webbed together in some way.
  3. Create my own categorization system to organize my thoughts; which ones are urgent, personal, academic, old and new.
  4. When starting to consume new content again, directly ascribe them to these premade categories. My ideas are constantly expanding, but they don't need to seem messy or daunting.
  5. nothing needs to be created from them (immediately, or at all). See it more as a pool where I can dive into when I need to clear my head, a visualizer for my pondering.