I've had some problems recently. It's a good thing really, since now I have something to write about in my blog. I was hoping I would have nothing to write about for a minute, but nope. Immediately problems.

Part 2... What is my problem?

Here we are. I have been a college drop-out for three weeks. What has happened in that time and what are my problems?

In part 1, I left off by mentioning that I was going to have to work, I had plans to work, and those did not work. That's what got me into my current situation which, might I say, is not the worst I've been in. For starters, I don't feel as trapped as before and my anxiety and overwhelm are compeltely gone. But all is not well. I've solved the problem of my torturous state of mind driving me closer and closer to insanity, but I'm still not okay.

Let's just continue the story for a minute so you can understand. After a day or two of recovering from the stress of not only dropping out of college, but also telling everyone who knew I was attending, I began applying to jobs. I applied to Costco, Kroger, some cleaning companies, door-to-door, anything. Nobody responded (except the door-to-door job but that's a story for another time). Those were rushed applications, I felt like I had to get a job as soon as possible, or my parents and family would shun me and hate me forever because I'm a failure. Just your basic bum thought process. I was worked up, sad, and had a new kind of confusion that is still prevalent today. I'll talk about the confusion in another post as well, but focusing on applications. After I realized I was rushing, I also realized that I had no clue what kind of job I wanted. My parents were telling me that I would need a career plan eventually, and I'm pretty sure they've convinced themselves that what I'm doing is a gap year (intellectually, they must know it's not on a subconcsious level). I sat down with myself.

What do I really want? What do I want to do, or what can I do to get there?

I used those questions and tried hard to answer them. Finally, I came to a conclusion (that is only half true, I know now) that I wanted to work in a plant nursery. When I grow up I want to live on a large property and garden my little heart out. The problem I was solving wasn't "how to buy a large property", I knew I was screwed in that no matter what I did cause I hate most high-paying jobs, I was solving "how to take care of plants". To be fair, I've had plants for years at this point. They have names because I'm sane, and most of them have survived, despite me doing the minimal amount of work (not because I don't want to do extra work, but because I can't afford to buy more pots and dirt). I have also been gardening for a roughly equal amount of time, but my strategy is very... natural. I barely touch any of my plants, and almost never harvest them unless someone needs something because I love love love having overfull overripe stinky rotting vegetables laying around my garden. That might sound like I'm being ironic but I'm dead serious. I love plants and hate "taking care" of them. So a job working with plants and older, more experienced people telling me how to take care of them and beating the naturalist in me so I can take proper care, would be a good thing. Plus it would pay a little.

This idea was bouncing around in my head and it motivated me to create a stunning resumé. I designed it, printed it, cut off the edges, and it was ready. Then I made a few more just for good measure. I also may have incorrectly printed three, so I have a couple extras. After I had my resumés ready, I gathered a list of every single plant nursery in my town. I wrote down all of their locations and websites and even bought an outfit for when I went to apply. Everything was set up, all I had to do was go. Talk to people. Talk... To people... Impossible.

As of right now I have still not applied to any of the nurseries in town, or any other job for that matter since the first hand full. What ended up preventing me from seeing if the nurseries were hiring was something that also influenced me to withdraw from college. It's an issue that has plagued me for a while now. Social anxiety. I'm not even sure if it would qualify as real social anxiety, but I get very very worried and terrified when:

• I have to talk to someone new
• I have to walk through a crowd
• I have to order at a restaurant or interact with someone who is working

And I get nervious and antsy when:

• talking to someone I know
• hanging out in a mildly crowded space for more than a few minutes

I'll elaborate more on why I have social anxiety and what it does in another post, but you can maybe see how this would be a problem. I spend a lot of time at home now and am too scared to go anywhere I don't have to. I have become a shut-in. Luckily I'm not without a job, since my father owns a company and he offered me a part-time position in web developement that I'm pretty good at.

But now, after all that, I can finally tell you the problems that I wrote this post about in the first place. I have barely been working. I have barely been doing anything. My current schedule (even though I have a better one I'm supposed to be following) consists of sleeping too late, feeling, frankly, extremely strange (we'll get into this another time as well), eating poorly, and then doing literally nothing all day long. When I say nothing, I mean working on this blog, working on YouTube assets, playing games, reading, or watching social media (I've cut down on this). I know I need to work, I'm supposed to do a minimum of twenty hours a week, but somehow I can't bring myself to do anything. I don't work out but I need to, I don't eat healthy but I need to, I sleep too much when I don't need to, I don't work when I need to. Something is up and to me it sounds like depression. It sounds like depression is up.

But there's some strange nuances that make me question if this is depression, or something else. To my understanding, depression makes you unmotivated, sleepy, sometimes snappy, unhappy but mostly numb, I've heard it messes with your hunger, but idk. For me, I'm feeling very motivated, I get happy, sad, angry, content, whatever, whenever I should, I get hungry regularly and stuff. So what? You might have noticed that I said I feel very motivated. That is extremely true. All day long I'm a stagnant pile of restless motivation. It feels like I am so motivated to do everything that I end up doing nothing. I lay in bed extra long because I really want to work on a video when I should be working. I don't workout because I feel like I should be writing something or thinking. I don't cook because I could be spending that time doing research. But the worst part of this, is that I stutter all day long rather than ever doing what I should. I sit there revving my engine but the flag never falls. I never hit the gas.

This is what I've been truly feeling. This has been my problem. I have an excess of motivation and nowhere to put it.

It's not just that though. I could be putting in the hours. I could be grinding right now but that one pesky issue keeps coming up for everything I do. Freaking social anxiety. Part of why I don't act on my will, is that I am too scared to. I'm not worried I'll fail, or someone will bully me, or anything like that. I'm worried I'll have to leave my room and sit in the public areas of the house. When I need to do a chore, I don't if there's someone nearby even if they are my family. If I need to sit down and write an extremely wordy blog post, I don't if there's people around me. This morning I booted up my PC and started writing. A few minutes later my family came down to do something completely unrelated to me without looking at me or my screen. I got sweaty and probably blushed as I ran upstairs with my laptop instead to finish writing there. Most of my time is spent in my room. Our house is big, and we don't snoop or anything. Conversations with my family are always nice, but they make me nervous. Lately it's been so bad that it takes a surprising amount of concsious effort not to shut down. When I'm talking I just want to close off and stare until someone walks away.

So maybe that's the issue. Maybe it's the rancid combination of endless motivation and craving to be better, and crazy hatred for social interaction that have driven me to where I am today.

Either way, as it stands, something needs to change. I need to be brave. I want to wake up on time. I want to workout. I want to eat better... But I can't. Not right now. I'll try to work on it.

Sorry for the wordy lengthy mess and stream-of-consiousness writing style, but I needed to get this out.

Thank you for reading, from the bottom of my heart.