Dear WanderlustKitten:

I enjoyed your writing, it was a pleasure, a refreshing experience to read your story here, thank you! Interesting, I was feeling kind of down just before I read your post and reading your skillful, talented writing refreshed me and I feel better.

The details of your story: you are 30, unemployed, no money, in debt, living in a city you hate, with roommates you despise, in abusive situation of constant stress, barely sleeping, nothing to do, and nowhere to go. You want to tell a story for others to read and be touched, inspired and changed because of the story you tell, but when you sit down to write, you are  not inspired or motivated.

You have OCD, scared of germs, and driving to California- which clearly you considered- would be a death wish, you wrote. (California is leading the U.S., with more than 640 thousand coronavirus cases, and more than 11.5 thousand coronavirus deaths so far, the great majority of cases and deaths being in Los Angeles County, according to Worldometer).

You were miserable in the past, been frustrated with your living situation for about 10 years, but you “still saw a purpose to life”.But now, you don’t see a purpose (“struggling to find any point in doing anything.. can’t exactly see why anyone does anything at all… It’s all meaningless anyway.. What does life mean at all?”).

You asked: “Is there any way to stop  thinking in my self in circles about how pointless everything ultimately is or.. what exactly am I supposed to do?”

My answer: clearly, you need a purpose that will give your life a meaning. Viktor E. Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote: “There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how'”, and “In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning”.

Here is a quote from the book that fits your situation very well: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.

Nietzsche wrote something that fits your writing situation, in my mind (replace writing with dancing, and music with inspiration or motivation to write): “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music”.

My suggestion: quit societal expectations and standards, find your own, very personal purpose and meaning. If you find none, create one that you choose as your own.

anita

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