i am incapable of enjoying my days off
feeling: psycho and psychoanalytical

(Don’t wanna read this giant wall of text? I don’t blame you. Here’s the TLDR.)

1.

(02-20-26)

It’s nearing 2:00 AM on Friday night (technically Saturday morning, if you wanna be that guy.) I’m sitting at my computer, dehydrated with a cold cup of coffee on my desk. Yesterday (Thursday) was my first day off; tonight (Friday) is my last.

My eyes keep flicking to the clock on my desktop environment’s¹ taskbar. Time passes gratingly, each uptick another mark in my mental ledger.

I used to try to get to bed by 2:00; nowadays I’m lucky if I make it there by 3:00. Every hour I stay awake is an hour I’m not asleep, and therefore a deferred loss of time before work (second shift) tomorrow morning/mid-afternoon—in short: if I’m not spending my time, then I’m wasting it.

It’s 1:39 AM.

It took me three hours to make dinner (two vegan cheeseburgers, downed with coconut water), during which I spent twenty minutes standing in the middle of my room, unable to decide whether I was going to finally take a shower or make something to eat.

I played my 3DS² instead. Last night I spent three hours playing VVVVVV in bed; having finally finished that game, I’m now onto Cave Story.³

It’s 1:45 AM.

It took half an hour to open up this text document, and one and a half to fill it halfway.

It’s 1:47 AM.

I spent all day thinking about my piled-up laundry before I decided I wasn’t going to do any of it.

It’s 1:50 AM.

I’ve avoided washing my dishes for five hours now even though it only takes five minutes. It’s too late for me to muster up the energy to try motivating myself again.

It’s 2:05 AM.

Thus, today’s dilemma becomes yesterday’s problem for tomorrow morning—altogether spanning a day and a half.

It’s 2:22 AM.

Minutes cannibalize themselves, metabolizing an entire evening into a singular memory of abridged nothingness.

It’s 2:34 AM.

The day becomes a cross-section of my twenties: beginning with a late start but nonetheless hopeful, it ultimately culminates in the same disappointing end.

It’s 2:36 AM.

I’ve been here many times before: anxious at the apex of midnight, still telling myself there’s hope even when cresting over into 1:00 AM. By 2:00 AM my anxiety surrenders to its dark sibling, depression, although my futile determination to “do something” perseveres.

It’s 2:43 AM.

I begin thinking of all the things I didn’t do today, in themselves bad decisions, which reminds me of other bad decisions I’ve made in the past. This leads me down a spiral of self-judgement and self-blame. My fortitude dissolves into morose existentialism as the witching hour arrives.

It’s 2:59 AM—

2.

(02-21-26)

Hello, tomorrow’s Xavier speaking. Please excuse yesterday Xavier’s emo rambling.

Every week follows the same cycle: five days of working full-time, interspersed with errands and obligations. On top of that, I attend figure drawing sessions before work twice a week, toiling over my current art series.⁴

By the time my days off (Thursday and Friday) roll around, I’m mentally and physically exhausted—which makes it all the harder to take a rest.

For me, relaxation takes work. I never feel “at rest” while resting. I don’t do well without a routine or structure, but I am wholly incapable of making one for myself.

A day of work and/or class makes sense to me; there’s segmentation and time stamps to follow, and a clear “before”, “during”, and “after” to each part of my day. Whereas an entire day off is like a block of arbitrary potential—I have no idea how to start molding it into something that feels comfortable to me; what was once an opportunity to be productive, creative, or proactive with self-care becomes a moratorium on waste and indecision.

3.

This annoying foible is part of a larger gambit that my partner Jem and I jokingly entertain: whether or not these weird compulsions are due to my high anxiety, potential autism, or some undisclosed third thing (Jem often wonders whether I have mild OCD.)

The most accessible answer is anxiety—and adulthood anxiety can be extremely articulated. I find that it seeps into every single faucet of my life, so I’m always worrying about something and vying for control as recompense.

This manifests in different fixations, the most obsessive ones having to do with money, time, and/or “productivity”.

4.

(02-22-26)

If there’s one concept I wish I could erase from my brain, it would be productivity, at least in a personal context.

I turn everything I do into a matter of productivity. Probably because most of my hobbies are creative in nature, so I expect to generate something out of them—whether it be artwork, writing, a website, or a blog post. The list goes on.

I think this stems from three sources:

1. My family history of hoarding
2. My predisposition to addiction
3. My time in art school

4a.

(02-24-26)

I don’t really talk about hoarding much because it feels specific to me and my family. Subjects like addiction, etc, are universal, but hoarding is a lot more individualized—at least to me. Maybe because it coincides with actual, physical objects and living spaces.

To talk about hoarding at all you have to reveal something about your home and way of living. Out of respect for my own boundaries and those of my family members, I don’t want to publicize much. But having grown up around hoarding, it’s obviously impacted me in such a way that I’ve carried it with me into adulthood.

Of course, I have hoarding tendencies. I’ve spent most of my twenties slowly unlearning these habits, and I’ve still got a ways to go. But I’m doing a lot better than I was—and have less stuff than ever before. But hoarding doesn’t stop at material possessions.

I’ve found that it can sneak up on me in subtle ways. Digital hoarding is a big thing—I’ve got a 5TB HDD that I dump all sorts of stuff onto every so often. Will I ever index its contents? Possibly. Just knowing I’ve got backups on backups on backups gives me a peace of mind. There’s a lot of worthwhile stuff I’ve held onto—pictures of me and my partner, old drawings and writing, etc. I reckon about 30% of it is worth keepint, and the rest is just random memes and phone screenshots from eight years ago.

Since 2024, I’ve been on a personal minimalist journey. I don’t keep a lot of books (I used to have 100+), clothes (I have a capsule wardrobe now, probably totaling ~30 articles of clothing, sans socks/underwear), techie gadgets, etc.

Despite my material minimalism, I’m still kind of a hoarder psychologically. And since I’m not hoarding physical objects anymore, my brain has started trying to hoard more abstract stuff. Like…time. Lists. Random notes. This Markdown file I’m writing right now.

It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s something that I can tick off in my head. A task or project. A finished chore. A website update. A drawing or piece of writing. Anything generative that acts as testimony to my being alive; evidence that I matter, and this all adds up to something, because I feel incomplete on my own.

4b.

(TW: explicit discussion of self-harm and substance abuse; feel free to skip this section.)

Addiction follows a similar route: same pathology, different substance.

I hesitate to call myself an addict. I feel like it doesn’t really “count” in my case. It never took over my life—but it took over me, and I think that is enough. There’s a granularity to addiction, just like with anything else I struggle with: chronic pain/illness, transsexuality, mental illness. Whose metric should I measure my life experiences by other than my own?

In any case, I am an addict. Was an addict. Exhibit addictive tendencies.

My first addiction was self-harm. Everything that came after was just part of chasing this original high.

I started when I was about 11 or 12, and kept at it all throughout high school. I stopped once I turned 18, then suffered a brief relapse several years later when I was 25.⁵

When I turned 18 I found my one and only substance that I genuinely enjoyed: cigarettes. I smoked and drank a lot because it was what my friends were doing, but they were just a means to an end.

Cigarettes, on the other hand, were my true love. My saving grace. If I hadn’t started smoking I probably would’ve started cutting again—that’s a pretty gnarly Catch-22.

I took up vaping after I quit smoking, but it was never the same, and I don’t really miss it. I’ve been nicotine-free for three years. I still think about cigarettes every single fucking day. My lost love; you’ll always be the one that got away.

Besides cigs, I smoked a lot of pot. Pretty much 24/7 for about two years. I drank, too. Not often—but when I did, I went crazy.⁶

Look at me, reminiscing. I forgot my original point!

I’m an emotional addict. A sappy, lovesick, romantic addict. I didn’t wake up with a bottle of Jack in my hand or hit dabs⁷ until I was comatose. I never tried coke, psychedelics, or got near anything like meth. One time I smoked spice—but that was by mistake, with people I shouldn’t have been with, who made out like it was just a regular blunt.⁸

I don’t think addiction has to be life-ruining levels of bad before you can call yourself an addict. Sometimes it’s more like an unhealthy relationship. I was codependent with fucking Marlboro Reds—and before that, any razorblade I could get my hands on (or a butterknife in a pinch). And as with any bad breakup, addiction left me with scars.

I’m 100% sober now. I don’t drink, smoke, or vape. I don’t even drink caffeine. But taking away the addiction doesn’t remove the addict—I’ve had to resort to more esoteric measures to get my fixes now. That’s where “productivity” comes in.

If I feel like I did something, there’s my dopamine. I make a blog post. I get more views on my website. A new email pops up in my inbox. I finish another drawing. I meditate/pray. I do yoga and physical therapy exercises. I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the evening.

Since this is an addiction, every fix is just a cascade of diminishing returns. It never hits as hard as it did before. I wrote one blog post; now I have to write a longer one. I made this drawing—now I need to make a better one. Etc, etc.

You can see how unsustainable this is, and how quickly it spirals out of control. Such is the nature of being an addict.

4c.

(02-25-26)

My last source of neuroses is art school.

I’ve been writing a blog post about art school for the past uhhh 6-ish months lol. I finally finished the first draft and had Jem look over it for me. I’m going to edit it and publish it soon.

Needless to say I’m a little burnt out talking about all of it, although you (the reader) have no clue about the context.

To keep things simple, I’ll just make a list of random thoughts:

• I went to art school at my local community college, from 2017-2020
• It changed my life and made me into the person I am today
• I attended before I started testosterone; I was still closeted at home but out at school
• I started off an abstract non-objective painter and somehow ended up becoming a figurative drawing artist⁹
• I loved my studies, professors, and classmates
• I didn’t love the competitive nature of juried shows, or the implicit judgement and prescriptions of worth that come with things like “portfolios” and “awards” and all the rest
• I never really had a clear goal in mind for where I wanted to take my art
• I never thought about graduating and transferring for a bachelor’s degree either, because I didn’t really want one in the first place
• I briefly enrolled in a state university before eventually dropping out, thus ending my artistic education with an Associate’s in Art
• Due to a confluence of personal issues, I began measuring my self worth by my art—and my art by academic achievements and accolades; since I wasn’t going to school anymore, that meant my art didn’t mean jack shit, and I was a fucking loser
• I’ve been trying to redeem myself ever since, like I can make up for my failure to pursue a higher art education
• Hence the obsession with productivity—as if I can make enough to make up for a bachelor’s degree

5.

I don’t know. I guess that’s all the psychoanalysis done with.

I feel like there was more I wanted to say—some stuff to do with testosterone, which I’ve been struggling with recently—but I’ve been sitting on this post for several days now, randomly vomiting words until three in the morning. I’m itching to post this and see it on Nekoweb’s RSS feed,¹⁰ watch my site views go up, etc, etc. So, idk. I can’t be bothered.

It’s 2:51 AM—and I need dopamine.

TLDR.

I measure my worth by what I can make.

It’s exhausting.

It’s what productivity means to my fucked up brain.

Colophon

Background image credit: Cupid with Psyche Extinguishing the Lamp by François-Edouard Picot.

I chose this image mostly for its vibes. I am not a huge fan of classical antiquity, but I’ve always been drawn to the visuals surrounding Cupid and Psyche’s mythos;¹¹ scenes of nighttime mystery, longing, and tribulations abound.