When Your Life Goes Quiet and nothing is obvious anymore

The strange shift

It feels like this is the last line in the plans I made at 16.

A year ago, I couldn’t drive anywhere without the right playlist. I woke up everyday knowing what I was waking up to achieve. I was happy to engage in conversations with new people. Everything was energizing.

Then, almost without noticing, that changed. I realized I just always got into the car and drove off to destination alone with my thoughts and the engine sound and the only thing that carried some extra life was the engine roar from downshifting just before an overtake. I moved my work hours to start at 11am and sometimes slept till 11:30am. No energy whatsoever to engage any new person, my response when conversations started switching to some back-and-forth was “oya na” or “I agree”.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if I am losing momentum, or worse, losing interest in my own life. After finishing secondary/high school, it’s really about; “get a job”, “live life”, “make new friends”, “you won’t get back your 20s”, but right now, it feels like this is the last line in the plans I made at 16.

The feeling can’t be articulated. A weird in-between season where there’s nothing to really look forward to and the compass just stopped pointing anywhere.

It is not laziness

Things are not falling apart, you’re just due for a new phase.

One of the most frustrating parts of this phase is that your life can still look functional on paper. You still have a job. You are still getting through your days. You are still doing what needs to be done. But internally, it feels like you’ve been planted in one place for too long. The old clarity is gone. Dangg.

I used to feel much more certain. I thought I knew where I was headed including the police checkpoints, and the detours. Let’s say eventually, I started looking for answers and also talking about it with those who have moved ahead of me, and I realize that it’s not uncommon and a lot of people in their 20s run into this. Not because everything is falling apart, but you are just done with that a specific phase of life.

The real problem is trying to solve your whole life at once

That is the trap. Wanting lifetime clarity during a season that is only asking for the next honest step.

I think the real problem starts when I began to demand permanent answers to all of the questions and pending states in my life. That was when the mental fatigue started flooding.

Every question becomes huge. Where should I live long term? What country do I actually belong in? Should I optimize for career, community, money, peace, proximity to people I love, or some ideal combination that probably does not exist? Should I stay in this career or pivot entirely? What kind of person should I marry? What kind of life am I even trying to build?

The questions are endless sometimes. I even started falling in love with a temporary pre-teen dream of becoming a pilot all over again. I guess I just needed something to be passionate about, or maybe it’s still something I need to do anyways - who knows?

Looking at them, I don’t think they are crazy. But I soon realized that trying to answer all of them with a definitive and long-term answer, all at once, was only paralyzing me. That’s a lot of life-defining decisions at once. A lot of the stress don’t come from the questions themselves. It comes from the pressure to make irreversible decisions while you are still gathering information about who you are and what actually matters to you.

That is the trap. Wanting lifetime clarity during a season that is only asking for the next honest step.

What I am learning

Treat your life like GTA for a minute. Side quests to the rescue. I currently plan to experiment taking on a secondary school teaching job as a volunteer just for the plot. I’m not sure how that’s going to pan out, but I might as well wake up every morning with a new purpose.

Right now, I do not think the answer is to force some grand, cinematic life decision. I think the answer is smaller than that and more practical. What has started to make more sense to me is this: stop trying to decide forever. Decide for the next six to twelve months.

That sounds almost too simple, but it removes a lot of fake drama.

Breaking things into smaller milestones means you’re making decisions at the right scale. Location-wise, you know you don’t want to be permanently where you are, but you don’t need to solve for “where I belong for life” right away. I just need somewhere conducive for productivity, keeping some of the people around me (I don’t have energy for new people) and social activities that I enjoy. Relationship-wise, at the end of the day, everyone is hard to live with including yourself. While you’re looking at future, don’t get too lost in it that every pieve of decision has cons, choose who’s bearable, doesn’t make you anxious, and makes your life feel less heavy. Career-wise, I don’t need to know the next 3 steps, I just need to take the next one first.

Treat your life like GTA for a minute. Take on side quests while you figure things out. Learn to play an instrument, play a sport consistently, get fit etc. I currently plan to experiment taking on a secondary school teaching job as a volunteer just for the plot. I’m not sure how that’s going to pan out, but I might as well wake up every morning with a new purpose.

My thoughts

If life has gone a little quiet, if you are still functioning but no longer sure where about the next destination, maybe you do not need a complete overhaul like you thought. Maybe you just need to stop demanding permanent answers from a temporary season.

Take it in smaller bits. That is often how clarity returns.