I'm Doing Nothing With My Life

It takes courage to stick to your story

Photo by Evan Buchholz on Unsplash

Above: My life, 2019-2024.

In my early twenties, especially, I’d sometimes catch myself between phases of my life. That’s how it seemed anyway – those moments in between where you’ve ended something and you haven’t started the next thing and you’re floundering about, wondering if you’ll ever manage to accomplish anything. I remember finishing university at age 20 and moving back home with absolutely nothing planned for my life. What was I going to do?

I had no idea.

I had no money, a degree that nobody seemed to care about, impending student loan payments, and no direction.

I didn’t know who to turn to for help. I didn’t know what to do.

Typically, the most pressing issue in these kinds of moments would be to find income – which I’d do, usually by going back to something I’d done before. Of course, that wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. So I’d start trying to figure out what I should be doing, what I needed to be working towards. And if I wasn’t making any progress on that, then I’d start working on myself in the meantime. I’d exercise a lot. I’d start rock climbing or scuba diving or training for a marathon or anything else to take my mind off the impenetrable future that loomed over my present, demanding I hurry up and figure things out.

I hated those in-between times. I felt like my life was in limbo and I was in stasis and if I didn’t get moving, I’d get stuck in this place I didn’t want to be. I was acutely aware of people potentially looking at me and thinking, “What a loser. Look at how hard she worked only to end up with nothing to show for it.” So I moved on and I achieved more.

Until now. For the past five years, I’ve done nothing with my life. I applied to 300+ jobs and had maybe only a handful of interviews total. I accepted one job offer, then left/mutually parted ways within a year. I got a divorce and started an on-and-off again relationship with someone who is on the path to sobriety but still figuring his patterns out. I even failed at parenting; I was once able to provide my son with a home, and now I can’t. It seems there’s no milestone for failure I haven’t managed to hit.

Or at least that’s one story I could tell about my life. But I’m making my own meaning here. I’m telling a different story about what I’ve been up to all this time. And it takes courage to stick to your story, especially when there’s ample evidence to support other ones. It takes courage to not feel like a loser when everyone around you seems to be thriving and you’re the only one who isn’t, at least not in visible ways. There’s no sign of any tangible achievement or progress towards something that could actually change your life, like a good job. It’s so tempting to give in to self-judgment, imposter syndrome, or whatever else says “you’re pathetic.”

But I’m not giving in. I’m sticking to my story.

Last week, I suddenly had to deal with a lapse in sobriety – a situation that typically causes me massive anxiety. It was only last summer that I faced this very same situation and made the mistake of hanging around for too long. It took me days to decide that it was time to extricate myself and when finally I did, I felt like I could breathe at last. This time, I quickly saw that the situation was headed into a repeat of what happened last summer. So I left, immediately.

Well, I tried to, anyway. The passenger-side tire of my car had a monster nail in it, so I ended up changing it on the street with a wonky jack that took forever to crank as I simmered in the summer sun. I called up tire shops at my destination and had them order me a whole new set because none of my tires ever seem to actually be full of air. Because I couldn’t drive over 80 kph on my spare tire, I then plotted a meandering route back home that stuck to old rural highways. And while driving home at speeds below 80 kph, I kept one eye on my GPS as the other was thoroughly blinded by the setting sun (summer at this latitude means going blind after 5 PM). Tears streaming down my face from the glare, I had to pull over several times because it felt like I was driving directly into the Gates of Hell or something equally scorching as my eyeballs melted.

Even so, I couldn’t help but note that the bucolic scenery on this patchwork of rural highways belonged in a painting. And as I got ready for bed that night in my temporary home in the countryside, I noticed I felt…surprisingly unconcerned about everything. Normally, I am consumed with anxiety as my mind circles the issue in question again and again and I wonder, What am I doing with my life??

The next day, I replaced all four tires on my car and groaned as I tapped my credit card to pay. I hadn’t anticipated such a large expense and this is exactly the sort of thing that usually triggers a financial anxiety spiral involving anger and resentment as I rage about my inability to make more money in this useless country. But for whatever reason, I just decided to not worry about it. A few hours later, my ex-husband told me he’d split the cost as he was the one who put the wrong tires on the car in the first place (apparently winter tires melt in heat – who knew?). So, it ended up not being such a large expense after all.

I decided to drive out to a beach not far away from my house in the countryside. It’s a beautiful beach in an area where the water drains like a basin, which means there’s a massive expanse of mud flats. You can get a 180 degree view of the horizon and on clear days, as the sun sets, the sky and water light up in an ethereal shade of hazy blue. Once the sun goes down, a near total absence of artificial light means the night sky is inky black and splattered with stars. It’s better than IMAX. And rather than obsess over the events that had unexpectedly forced me to return home, I simply sat, took in the view, and felt incredibly lucky to live in such a ridiculously scenic area.

Then it dawned on me. I think my therapy is working.

Just two years ago, I couldn’t have done any of those things. I would’ve seen all of the stupid tasks that lay between me and leaving the situation I was in – changing my tire and lugging out an air pump to fill up my remaining leaky tires, figuring out how to get home without going over 80 kph, facing large unexpected expenses, and just having my life be so unpredictable – as too difficult. So, I would’ve continued to share my space with someone struggling to remain sober and felt trapped. I would’ve felt despair, helplessness, anger, and resentment. I would’ve turned an accusing finger on myself and said, You loser! How could you let yourself end up here?

Two years ago, I couldn’t set a boundary and say, “I don’t accept this in my life, so I’m just going to leave.”

After decades of living in big cities without a car, driving felt overwhelming. Driving while keeping an eye on the GPS was even more overwhelming. And driving on rural highways with the sun making it impossible to see was the kind of thing that would’ve had me white knuckling the steering wheel in fear, gnashing my teeth as I railed against having to live on this stupid continent that’s so obscenely wealthy but can’t seem to grasp the basics of public transportation. By the time I arrived anywhere, my nerves would’ve been shot.

I couldn’t have been hit with a $700 expense out of nowhere and not felt a physical weight settle on my body. I certainly couldn’t have told myself that I wasn’t going to worry about it and then actually not worry about it.

Even just five months ago, I couldn’t manage a breakup without losing my appetite completely and simply failing to eat for weeks at a time. But now? Now I could accept that a breakup would be okay because I can’t address someone else’s issues for them, then stop for a slice of pizza on the way home from the beach where I had fallen in love.

This is what I’ve been working towards, step by step, over the past five years: self-knowledge, setting boundaries, becoming more emotionally resilient, and building trust in my ability to handle whatever comes my way. I once had all of the above in spades but somewhere along the line, life became more complex and these capacities eroded away.

It’s true that these past five years have been nothing years in terms of work, that they’ve been an extended in-between time. I haven’t known who to turn to for help. I haven’t had much direction. I haven’t created a wildly successful Substack that’s enabled me to quit a job I don’t like. I haven’t launched a new career, or found some deeply rewarding path. I’ve eked out a meagre existence through freelance work instead. But that freelance work has freed up my time so I can go to therapy in the middle of a Tuesday morning or twice a week if I want. It’s allowed me to continue to earn an income even as my expenses have dropped to a minimum.

Five years ago, I felt emotionally disconnected from virtually everyone except my child. I forged a deep connection with someone I thought was such a good match for my personality, but whose struggles with sobriety triggered my anxiety to an extreme. In the middle of my breakup a few months ago, I felt like I needed some time alone to think and booked an airplane ticket with a long layover in London. So after my chaotic week of boundaries and spontaneous car maintenance, I got on a plane.

Today, I walked through Tate Britain and happened to see a painting of sorts, made of cork, by Max Ernst. The name seemed familiar and as I read the description next to the display, I recalled how I’d been obsessed with Dadaism in high school. As I stood there looking at this Dadaist painting on a rainy afternoon in the middle of London, I thought, I am my own dream come true. I was the little religious girl separated from the world who yearned to be in it. I daydreamed about radical art movements and wished I could be somewhere, anywhere, where life was happening. And here I am, in it at last.

A story like that needs no defence. Life has somehow granted me the gift of time to turn inward and grow, so I’m taking it. Slowly but surely, it’s paying off – no matter what anyone else thinks.

For more on finding validation within, see:

Can You See Me Now?