Detaching from stress & finding other means to joy

Black Lips at Joyland Festival 2023, Bali.

I have felt super overwhelmed for these past few months. No matter how long a vacation I took, I never felt fully freshened. As soon as I’m back to work, all I could think about is getting ready for another vacation — which gives me no time and space to focus on my current activities.

While I am proven to be able to work under these circumstances, it’s only natural to want to break free from these unhealthy cycles. Thus, when I was in the right state of mind, I started to analyze what went wrong, and I think I figured out some.

1. My source of joy is often coming from the source of stress. These days, I often looked back to my junior high and high school times. Back then, phones and (mainly) laptops were the devices I interacted with ONLY when I had something I NEEDED to do. Nowadays, even during weekends, I still automatically open my laptop and (desperately) try to find fun in it. Watching movies and series, texting from the laptop, browsing through anything, etc. Eventually, I forced myself to have fun using the device that gives me stress too (re: work). Hey, I love my job, but it is undeniable that it can get strenuous sometimes.
2. I tend to have this expectation of achieving so many things during vacation that I forget actually to live in the moment and enjoy it. I get it — I may be short on cash so I want to live it to the fullest, but that somehow goes against the true vacation I need to take. I always have this desire in my head that I wanted to go to this (not so) fancy place or city and when I arrived there, I could only think about how much I had spent there. It just seems like I replaced my stressed-about-work mind with a stressed-about-vacation-budget mind.
3. I am too fixated on the perspective that only vacation can make me happy and that work sucks (while it doesn’t have to). This makes me crave “self-reward” that is endless and eventually meaningless because of the repeated amount of it. Maybe because I also have a mindset that forces me to earn rewards every time I work, which I think is wrong. Working should be one of my obligations and as long as I can make it fun (or at least enjoyable), I do not need to be rewarded for it (other than salary, of course).
4. I don’t have clear goals and it makes me see every little task that I finished as an accomplishment (which is similar to my previous point). It feels like I do not have a clear KPI or sort of level of tasks that are worthy of self-rewards.

How do I get out of this? Well, I haven’t. But I’m trying to. Here’s what works for me so far:

1. Detaching myself from the source of my stress. This seems pretty obvious, but what I mean is that I try to find happiness from anywhere but my laptop (which is what I mainly use for work). I switched from watching series on my laptop to my phone—and when it starts to get uncomfortable, I turn to books or any other activities. There are times when I just ended up reorganizing my whole room—which is nice—so yay! Not only do I detach myself from stress, but I also get my room tidied up.
2. Force myself to do something that does not give me my *usual* joy, but it actually still does (re: reading papers, etc). Just like I briefly mentioned in the previous point, ever since I pulled my sight away from the laptop screen, I stumbled upon some activities that may sound banal but they amused me still. I’m going to take reading as an example. I forced myself to go back to reading classics at first. Then I got sleepy easily. But then I remembered that I could not turn to my laptop (although I actually could, I just programmed myself into thinking that I couldn’t). So I got back to classics—eventually leading to me enjoying the book. Win-win for everybody.
3. Manifest and see me as how I want to be seen (and actually work on it). I think I saw this on the internet a lot where people just start making resolutions and moodboards for the upcoming year. I used to think that it was only a waste of time, but I eventually got myself to create one. Boy little did I know it helped me bit by bit! I placed it on the place I lay my eyes upon often—phone homescreen or lockscreen and my desk. It just motivated me and snapped me back into reality when I was about to procrastinate. So thanks, Pinterest and Canva.

I realized that endless lethargy and fatigue may indicate something deeper and more serious (either a mental or physical illness), so I actually am planning to see a professional about this. However, in the meantime, I feel the need to try my best to self-fix this mess before it interferes with my work and daily life. Plus, there are people who cannot see I fail, otherwise they’ll break down too.

Good luck to all of uswhofeelthiswaytoo!