Anxiety

My confidence in myself fluctuates. Some days I feel that what I am doing is "correct" and that I am "on track," while other days I feel like I am just treading water.

Right now I am having a bad day. I am doing things because I "know" that I "should" do them - I should go to class to take notes and learn, I should eat because food is necessary, I should go to office hours because they will help my understanding, etc. I am going through the motions. I don't know if that is part of life - going through the motions. 

I hope that this isn't part of life, but I think it is. I don't like how my attitude towards my life fluctuates. It doesn't even depend on the circumstances; I can be in a melancholy mood when things are "going well." 

I think that I am looking for a metaphorical key to some understanding of life. I think that life can be explained, that I can reduce the plethora of experiences and thoughts and actions of my life to things that can be explained, that the interactions between those are understandable, that if I do X then Y.

However, I think I am realizing, albeit slowly, albeit by trial and error and trial and error and error and more error, that life can't be explained. I can try to look for relationships between different aspects of my life, but I can't let that search inhibit actually living. I can't get hung up on things; things happen, and things will continue to happen. 

I have this idea that if I do some certain things that my life will run well, will function smoothly. Eating three meals a day, showering every day, going to every class, going to church every week, etc. I think that if I miss one of any of those, if I don't go to church one week, if I miss a meal, that it says something about me. It says that I don't "have my shit together," that I don't really know what to do, that I'm going to fail. I know, objectively, that those aren't true. I can miss church. It isn't the end of the world. But when it happens, I really think that I am a fuckup. 

I don't want that. I want to understand that life will keep happening even if I don't live perfectly. I guess that is what I am working on. I can know that, but a deeper understanding is hard to come by. I don't know how to understand that, how to change how I react to my life. It sucks.