#so yeah meds = 💖. everything is just slightly more bearable and that makes me feel like there's a point in trying.

[running-in-the-dark]

I'm realising things about myself/my brain again lol (this time it's nothing super sad at least)

so I unfortunately have this problem where I get very obsessed with things and then have to buy everything related to that thing. like - right now it's fountain pens and ink, or records when it's music, or merchandise and stuff like that.

and I think it's because I want to spend all my time with just this one thing/topic/person/hobby, but the buying too many things aspect isn't always there. so I was wondering why that is, because I do like the things that I buy, but it doesn't feel like it's enough, like sometimes I feel so excited to get the things I ordered but then they get here and it's like.. hmm. this did nothing for me 🤷 and I often get very confused about that because I wanted this so much, why doesn't it make me happy??

and I think what causes that is when something is stopping me from doing what I really want to do. like right now I want to sit at my dining table and have lots of room to put all my inks and stuff on there to really use them. but I can't, because 1. my entire body hurts so I can't sit in a chair, 2. I have no energy again so I can't really focus, and 3. the table is completely covered in stuff so I couldn't sit there anyway.

so I can't do the thing that I actually want to do, and instead I do something else that I can do: buying stuff. that I then can't use because of the issue that caused me to buy stuff, and that makes me more frustrated and that just makes all of it worse.

chaos around me is a huge part of this. when everything is cluttered and messy, I can't think about anything else. but I usually don't have the energy to clean, so I try to do stuff anyway without putting things away when I'm done, and it just keeps getting messier and that makes me even less able to tidy up.

and I think I do sort of know when that is happening but I usually don't actively realise it? I think that's why I 'randomly' decided I need to rearrange the furniture in our entire apartment. I do that pretty often, basically whenever there's something that makes me unable to focus or do stuff - like the table being in the wrong spot for me to comfortably use it, or things being left on surfaces they're not supposed to be on.

so then I rearrange stuff or get another shelf or make whatever changes that need to be made to fix the problems that I had with the old layout, and that makes it better, because those problems are now fixed. but then new problems show up over time and it starts all over again. every time I do this it feels like 'this is it, this is perfect right, this is definitely going to fix all my organisational problems'. but of course it never lasts.

this also happens in slightly different ways. like when I got really into buying records, my brain came up with all these very strict rules for how I had to handle, store, clean, organise and listen to them. it has to be perfect. I have to do it the right way - that I have no say in basically - or I can't do it at all. so I started organising my records, and I wasn't allowed to listen to them until they had been cleaned and labeled and sorted and put into my spreadsheet. but that took a long time because of lots of different things, so in the meantime I kept buying more because I couldn't listen to the ones I already had. which meant I then had more records to organise, and it just. kept. getting. worse. I never finished cleaning them. I only listened to a few of them. and whenever I look at them I feel very ashamed because that means I failed.

the fountain pens and ink situation right now is similar - I get back into this hobby, I want to do something but either don't know/can't figure out exactly what it is, or other circumstances keep me from doing it. so I buy. and when I buy I have to organise (it's not optional, I really HAVE to do it). which leads to more chaos while I get out all the (many) things I need to do that - because it needs to be perfect. no, it needs to be right. I don't even see it as perfection, it's just the only option. I can't do it any other way except the way my brain tells me it needs to done.

I have no idea what the point of this post is, and I think this is probably pretty obvious to other people? but I have to realise this over and over again every few months and somehow this knowledge never stays in my brain 🤷 so. I guess maybe writing it here might help me remember. though to be honest I know it won't, it's like my brain is completely resistant to keeping information long term. 🤷