I’ve been in this weird headspace lately where life is just… strange. On the surface, everything is fine. I go to work, eat relatively healthy, try to stay on top of errands, keep things running — the usual. But underneath it all, there’s this constant feeling of dull pressure, like I’m being stretched thin by things that don’t really matter. It’s like I’m always busy, but rarely present.
Every day feels packed, but nothing sticks. I go through the motions, check off tasks, scroll a bit, eat, sleep, repeat. I end the day drained, like I ran a marathon in my head — but can’t really remember anything meaningful that happened. It’s not burnout in the dramatic sense, just this low-grade hum of tiredness and disconnection that never really turns off.
Socially, things have gotten quieter too. I barely see my friends anymore. Most of them are still into drinking and going out — stuff that used to feel exciting but now just feels… loud and repetitive. There was no big falling out. Just different rhythms now. Slower ones. And sometimes I sit with that and wonder if it’s just part of growing up, or if something deeper got lost along the way.
And then my brain starts spinning, usually late at night, when everything’s quiet. I start thinking about the future — and it honestly kind of scares me. Not in a dramatic, apocalyptic way, but in that creeping “things-are-moving-too-fast” way. AI is suddenly everywhere. Wars are happening in the background of our everyday lives. Economies feel fragile. Everything seems more unstable than it used to be, like we’re just pretending things are normal while the ground shifts under us.
And weirdly, my mind keeps drifting back to 2006. I don’t even know why exactly — maybe because it felt slower. Simpler. The internet was just fun and weird, not all-consuming. There were fewer screens, fewer existential threats in the news feed. Boredom existed, but it didn’t feel dangerous — it felt open. It felt like space to breathe. Now everything feels compressed, even rest.
I don’t think I’m depressed. I’m not miserable. But I feel… detached. Like I’m watching my life from the outside, waiting for it to feel like mine again. There’s this quiet emptiness running underneath everything, like background static. Not loud enough to break me, just enough to make everything feel slightly out of tune.
Anyone else feel like this? Have you figured out how to shake it — or at least live with it in a way that makes sense?
No I do not, life is fun. You know why? I’m on a serotonine medication
It’s the 21st century. Don’t be unhappy. Be happy. It’s better.
Build a family
This is such a basic ass answer, but my recommendation would be to unplug, go outside, and read philosophy. Read Camus, read Sartre. Read existentialists in general. They talk about these things and come to interesting conclusions. Life is absurd. And it’s even more absurd than it’s ever been. The answer to that absurdity lies in your own personal meaning. Because life goes on whether you languish in it or attempt to find beauty in the monotony.
Another basic ass answer: It’s capitalism. Capitalism stole the meaning from your life to create profit for shareholders. It took the meaning from your life by telling you what job you have determines what you are. How long were we conditioned to attach our value as people to “what we want to be when we grow up.” Life feels meaningless because that deep conditioning is completely at odds with how we actually feel as people.
Another way you can start finding meaning is to find meaning in fighting against that. Find a job that you can ignore so you can live your life when you’re not working. Especially in the US we live to work. That creates this dissonance inside you because that’s fucking absurd. But it’s the kind of absurdity that should breed anger and resentment at the system, and those feelings should get translated into righteous action against these systems of exploitation and control. Find joy and immediacy in sabotaging ads conditioned to make us feel inferior. In doing anything that gives the finger to these twisted injustices.
There are a lot of ways to buck this feeling of joyless monotony. And the best way is to try to create something better, for yourself and for others. We are pushed to waste our “free” time consuming and producing. We are pushed to turn our hobbies and creativity into a “hustle.” Start revolting against these ideas in your everyday life and I think you will start to find a lot more meaning and joy. It’s scary, but a placid safety will while away your life and leave you feeling empty. Dangerous freedom will make you finally feel alive.
I feel the same way. I’m in college right now and haven’t even tried applying for internships. I’m entering my third year and am just too anxious from my inaction and my anxiety is causing my inaction. I honestly have no idea how to achieve my career goals besides interning and getting certifications. I feel like my university’s computer science program which I’m entrenched into is not preparing me for any of this. It’s been years since I programmed anything and I feel like a wet sausage sliding into mute failure. Not good, not bad. I don’t even know what the reward for doing anything is and haven’t for a long time. I just feel anxiety and confusion and want to be a network engineer but don’t know the right words to say to the right people at the right time. An analogy is like being an egg forced to become a chick by the time you are laid by the chicken. If you aren’t by then, you crack open and spill everywhere and have wasted all of your time.
Most human beings are depressed by our current world.
If we fix wealth inequality things will get better.
I don’t think I’m depressed. I’m not miserable. But I feel… detached. Like I’m watching my life from the outside, waiting for it to feel like mine again. There’s this quiet emptiness running underneath everything, like background static. Not loud enough to break me, just enough to make everything feel slightly out of tune.
I am sorry to say that this is exactly what depression feels like. It feels like nothing.
It isn’t a presence of misery, it’s an absence of joy. A void of emotion. The peaks and valleys become hills and ruts, the horizons dim and the colors fade.
When your emotional landscape is flat and gray, very few emotions can still paint the world a different color. Namely, anxiety. Anxiety isn’t really an emotion, it’s a complex interface between stress and thought. Anxiety taps into the same fear centers that can wake us up from a deep sleep - it’s a primal, fundamental neurological circuit that can and does break through the general malaise of depression.
This leaves you with the constant feeling of pressure. Normally, anxiety is dulled by the constant wash of normal human emotions, but when it’s the only thing you can feel… it’s rough. I’m sorry for what you’re going through.
Depression is a deep, tangled mess. There are environmental and genetic factors. Causes and treatments might be purely psychological, might not. Treatment for depression - pharmaceutical or psychological - is very often flawed but almost always better than no treatment at all.
There is no single solution, and depression tends to wane so slowly and subtly that it’ll be hard to point to when or why you started to feel better. But you will feel better. And then you may feel worse again, so make sure you keep doing things that make you feel better… even when you don’t feel bad right now.
Depression also mutes the emotions you feel from your own memories and the emotions you feel from your predictions of the future. We always live in the present. Our past and our future are just simulations running in our minds. When we’re depressed, our past and future also becomes gray and anxious… even if the memories were once perfectly happy and the plans were once exciting and vibrant.
Whatever you do, it must be a part of a greater whole. Holistic treatment is key. Adjusting thought processes and habits, managing emotional responses, maintaining or improving your bodily health, speaking with professionals, taking on new hobbies and social engagements and personal responsibilities… all of these can help. All of these are hard to start.
Best of luck. Happy to talk more.
Damn… Thanks. I didn’t realize why reading OP’s post made me cry. I empathized real hard because this is kind of my life, emotionally. This puts it into perspective.
As much as I can’t really help directly - except to say that I absolutely identify and empathise with your current state - can I just say that I really liked the prose of your post. Maybe you could write, if you don’t already? Be it short stories, a novel or a diary, you seem to have an inherent talent already.
Writing, I find, can help soothe the mind, too. 😊Yeah with how well this is written, a daily or weekly blog analyzing your feelings would be a great read and possibly have a side benefit of getting a grasp on the “why” and moving forward. Plus creative outlets are amazing at breaking up the dull monotony you’re describing
I get like this when I’m avoiding dealing with a bigger issue. I get in a routine of distractions from dealing with something it’s kind of a bland purgatory.
Most of the time these days I face whatever it is and things get bettter. Occasionally it’s something I can’t tackle alone, right now I’m talking to a therapist.As far as time speeding up, I have a recommendation. Do something out of your comfort zone at least once a month. If you aren’t doing new things time speeds up. Work is usually so monotonous it makes time speed by. I’ve been happily surprised at how much time seems to have slowed down since I quit my job and I get out and do new stuff more often.
i started traveling when i felt like something was wrong with the way i was living and then did not stop traveling.
I’m living how i want to now, and the world is beautiful.
I’ll also say that not using the internet, even for a couple days, is incredibly relaxing, like letting out a held breath.
I think you mean social media when you say internet right? Because I often learn technical things on the internet and that is not stressful, its actually fun.
i mean the internet, or screens in general, although social media can be particularly aggravating.
Getting off the internet as a whole for a number of days. Save some of that stuff for offline reading/watching and just don’t open the browser or any connected apps.
Getting off electronics once in a while is also good for your mind, let tedium in so you find something else to do, even if it’s thinking about things
Yeah true.
Sounds familier, but Ive got no answers
It’s easy, first of all you have to
And once you did that all you have to do is
All you gotta do is
And weirdly, my mind keeps drifting back to 2006. I don’t even know why exactly — maybe because it felt slower. Simpler. The internet was just fun and weird, not all-consuming.
It’s up to us to make it like that again.
Anyone else feel like this? Have you figured out how to shake it — or at least live with it in a way that makes sense?
I stopped participating/consuming into anything that is algorithmically managed. It means that I cut back on everything online that is not… man-made. I don’t do Twitter/X, Facebook, Reddit, and so on. I even almost completely quit using YT beside a couple channels. So, I use Lemmy, watch vids on non-YT platforms (peertube, for example) and I do read blogs and websites… all contents that are all created by actual persons (not some SEO-optimized or AI-crap), actual people that care about what it is they’re talking about.
I feel… detached. Like I’m watching my life from the outside, waiting for it to feel like mine again.
The thing with those corporation-owned ‘occupations’ is that our live don’t belong to us anymore. It’s theirs. Our live is a product they are exploiting (mining) and at the same time it’s… a service they’re selling back directly to us, as well as to other people that the algorithm thinks will (dis)like us.
Realizing that, I decided I did not want to be the product anymore no matter how much I liked their ‘services’.
And that was liberating. I would not want to go back to their precious little apps and algorithms. I spend a lot less time online, but I appreciate almost every second of it. Which to me at least seems like a good compromise ;)
edit: clarifications & typos.
How exactly does one go on peertube? There’s probably a lot of instances and it seems kind of overwhelming to “choose an instance I like”.
I second sticking to social media platforms without an algorithm feed. When I scroll lemmy or mastodon, I feel satisfied sooner that I’ve seen what I’ve wanted to see, and actually get tired of content.
I want to second your comments about social media and algorithmic marketing. I completely stopped watching youtube unless a human recommended the video or i searched for the content myself. I don’t take recommendations from machine learning models - especially not ones designed and tuned to enrich billionaires at the expense of health, society, and democracy.
This probably sounds quaint, but i have returned to paper for my news/arts/culture stuff. I figure that if it is worth printing, it is more likely to be worth reading. Audio books can be nice, but I limit even them because they can intrude too much on my thinking time. I think part of the stress and fatigue i used to feel was related to a lack of reflection. It is good and healthy to just think. I am starting to wonder if daydreaming is a bit like daily exercise- not doing enough will really fuck you up.
One more thing i started doing that helped with my anomie was getting involved in helping people. I started volunteering at a church. Now, I am an atheist and very open about it (without, i hope, being a dick). But i found a church that is compatible with my beliefs and they do some nice community outreach. No one there has ever tried to convert me, so i extend them the same courtesy. The work is nothing heroic: i help stream the service so the elderly and disabled members (congregants?) can watch from home when they can’t make it, i help with the semi-annual food drive, and every now and then i make coffee for the old ladies while they have their meetings. It has made a huge difference in how i feel about my community. When i go out, i see friends and friendly people throughout the city. I feel like i am plugged into a mutual aid society and (try not to laugh) it makes me feel important in a way that work, school, and gym never did.
Question, what platform do elderly/disabled people prefer for tuning in to streams? Or what could you recommend?
Not that I’m planning to do this myself in my community rn, but I might be moving to a sleepy neighborhood later this year. If I ever want to set something up like this, it’d be cool to have something easy-to-use to suggest.
So at my church, we just stream the sunday service on Youtube. I would rather use peertube or something but I am not sure how some people would react to the change. At least one of our viewers uses a screen reader to browse; i don’t want to complicate her life.
I don’t take recommendations from machine learning models
I made up my mind sometimes ago but I do really think if a lot/enough of us were to stop using that nasty thing, corporations would be forced to reconsider the way they interact with us.
This probably sounds quaint, but i have returned to paper for my news/arts/culture stuff.
Not to me. I draft all my texts longhand, sketch and paint the same, and now over a year ago I quit reading ebooks because of privacy concerns, going back to print, including mags and newspapers… And my agenda is paper too.
Now, I am an atheist and very open about it (without, i hope, being a dick). But i found a church that is compatible with my beliefs and they do some nice community outreach
I’m one too but had an almost two hours long discussion yesterday afternoon with a catholic priest I went to ask questions about some passages I was reading in the New Testament. I was impressed by how available the guy was, and how open to discussion knowing I wasn’t a believer, and by how close our view points were on so many things (beside the God/Salvation part, obviously) and we both happily agreed on meeting again to discuss further.
I’m not surprised by what you’re saying about feeling connected. It’s something that could very easily happen to me with that priest and his little congregation. I offered to help him in my field of exper… in those things I’m not completely incompetent, and will renew my offer next time we meet. Then, I’ll see if he sees any use in it or not. Meanwhile, he gave a me a couple books from the church’s library for me to read.
It was nice to read your reply! Digital tools are fine but i find nothing beats paper for making art.
I was also pleasantly surprised to have a comfortable one-on-one with my minister. Her thinking is very sophisticated - even when it comes to her own faith - and she is completely sincere about recognizing and making amends for historic wrongs committed by the church.
Life is what you make it.
No one else will do anything about your life other than you.There is no grand meaning, you just live. So make it what you want it to be.
It’s also natural to be depressed in life. Don’t let that stop you from living.
For me it’s a smouldering anxiety that everything is going to explode. Nothing I do today matters, because it could all be gone tomorrow. But if I give up and stop working, everything explodes. It feels pointless.
Some of that sounds like an attitude shift common when you get middle-aged, the not liking loud venues, time feeling like it’s moving faster, etc. But some of it sounds like anhedonia, which is a symptom of depression. It’s most noticable when you stop enjoying things you used to.
There are inventories with symptoms that are used to evaluate, but might be good just to get an idea of what depression and anxiety look like symptom-wise, which can include fatigue and less interest in people. Here’s one called the Beck Depression Inventory and there’s a similar one for anxiety.
If it’s interfering with your life, definitely seek help.
I can definitely relate to some of the points you’ve made here. Regarding things feeling the same day-in-day-out, I get this feeling when I fall into a rut. Like get home from work, play the same game I’ve been playing for a few weeks, watch the next episode of a show I’ve been watching, tidy up etc. When I notice this happening, I realise it’s time to shake things up a bit; go for a walk, draw something, alter my schedule and try a new game. Variety is the spice of life and all that.
I think it’s pretty normal to move on from old friends after a while - life kinda just gets in the way and you get out of rhythm with them as you say. Maybe you need to find a new community to involve yourself with, one that reflects your current social needs. I might get downvoted for this, but on a personal level I’m quite glad I found the furry community after I moved away from my hometown. There’s a lot of hate online for the group, but at the end of the day it’s filled with cool nerdy people who don’t take life too seriously, and this feels especially valuable at a time when we’re bombarded with depressing news of politics and war. Obviously you don’t have to join this group in particular, but having any kind of community around you I think is really useful.
And like someone else has said, try to step away from social media if you use it at all. The algorithms usually steer towards negative, controversial topics that gather the most clicks. It’s not a healthy thing to consume.
“Have you tried being a furry about it?” - Dr. Furry 😆
Hey, if it works, it works :3
Was stuck in marasm. Wgat helped was picking up shit I lowkey wanted to do but decided not to cause…reasons I guess? Started learning skateboard, began duolingo with latin and czech, later added music, still sideeying my guitar but that one is hard to learn…not gonna fail anyway.
From your description, you got the work part of “work to live” figured out. Now, find so.ething fun to live for. Cycling weird places, skateboard tricks, rollerskating, treks through forrest. Allow yourself some actual rest and yo see or experience something fun and memorable.
