I took a personal day away from the world yesterday. I turned off notifications for all my social media on my phone. I did not message or call anyone. Other than going to work, the only interaction I had with the outside world was going to Starbucks for about an hour to do some writing. I could easily say I needed a break from all the stimuli but I think it was much deeper than that. I literally and metaphorically needed to start over, start fresh, return to default factory settings. Sometimes you need to reboot.
For nearly a week, I found myself getting more and more angry over the pitiful nonsense of messages and notifications from email and social media. Even the sound my phone makes when I get an email drove me crazy. I turned this off before my antisocial blackout. Part of me blames Facebook for changing their algorithms. There was the nonsense and there were issues from work floating in and personal issues; some from the outside world and some from within. The growing irritation with everything in the world followed by the insecurities and confusion of everything that didn’t irritate me, pushed me into a feeling of unrest and panic.
I have learned a lot about myself after learning that I have anxiety and depression. Many behaviors that are physical signs of anxiety and depression I have had since I was very young. I have had these issues since I was very small. Learning this destroyed my self-image entirely and my reaction to this was feeling like garbage and believing I was garbage to everyone in my life. Even if I had no reason to believe so, I thought I had been selfish or awful to everyone I knew or cared about.
I wanted a day of nothing; a day that I could just be in my head and nothing else. I realized that my job has a lot of external stimuli that I never have time to recoup from because I am bombarded by other external stimuli from technology. I had to get away from some of it so I took away my connection to the outside world. I turned myself off and back on again. I am sure that some people noticed my lack of interaction with the world yesterday. I am certain they want to know if I am okay. The honest answer is I am apathetic but I am okay.
The reset feels like it worked. I am ready to take on the world and everything it will throw at me but there is one thing I am concerned about. I believe in my sudden panic, I could have pushed someone away; someone I believe I know well but I still know so little of myself. I think they will understand what I had to do but are they willing to speak to me again? Whatever the future holds, I am ready for it. I am ready to keep fighting.
James Pack 