The ice wall

I’m struggling a bit lately with… engagement issues. Not quite sure what else to call it. But it’s my term for when I have a hard time getting interested in something enough to absorb or synthesize anything related to it. Sometimes it happens in regards to something I need to work on, like a subject I need to learn about or a project I have to get done. Sometimes it’s about a piece of media, even just pure entertainment, that I cannot summon up the focus to read, watch, or play even though it should theoretically be interesting to me.

It’s a symptom of my depression, and honestly, I think it’s the symptom that has had the most negative and debilitating effect on my life. It makes taking in anything that’s new or possibly outside of my expectations painfully difficult. It makes it hard to learn something because I can’t always take in and retain the information. Even when it comes to things that should be fun, I find I can’t just pick a new thing and give it a try. I need something that I feel very, very confident I will get a particular experience from, or else have to go back to something familiar that I haven’t looked at in just long enough that I won’t be bored. When I’m in this state, I end up chasing this very particularly balance between soothing and stimulation, overwhelm and boredom, which is super hard to actually find.

I’ve been relatively mentally and emotionally stable during the pandemic, all things considered. But this problem of mine is the one thing that I think pandemic stress really aggravated. It feels like it’s been extremely strong in the past number of months. Even clicking on a goddamn fifteen-minute Youtube video recommended by Bernie feels like dragging myself up a mountain if I’m not exactly sure of what sort of experience it will provide. It stretches out like an ice wall in front of me, all smooth with no handholds to begin climbing up.