Monologue 003: a newsletter about not writing a newsletter.
I promise I'm not always this negative.
ennui
/ɒnˈwiː/
Learn to pronounce
noun
a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.
"he succumbed to ennui and despair"
Similar:
boredom
tedium
listlessness
lethargy
lassitude
I find myself in this headspace often where I feel listless. Hours and hours of watching and reading and existing in a grey stillness overcomes me and suddenly I realise that I'm bored.
Really bored.
And on the off chance that this boredom is curable, I would get up, go for a walk and cure my mental ailment with nature and the hopes of a future version of myself that is not bored.
But again, that's an off chance.
A “maybe” in a sea of inevitables.
At this point, I'm waxing poetics because I don't want to tell you that I've been avoiding this newsletter. Because in some way that would mean that I've failed. Again.
And I don't necessarily hate failing. I just hate thinking about failing. I hate the anxiety that comes with ultimately not being good at something or not completing something. Or simply not doing anything. Because I have once more convinced myself that resting is failing.
Although the lines between resting and avoiding are becoming blurred by the ennui of boredom.
And now we're back to square one.
Even now as I type this out - pixel letters turning into pixel sentences, my fingers creating something coherent out of my thoughts - I feel so lazy.
Everything takes so much effort.
And for a while, I feared telling anyone how I truly felt.
You're just lazy, Ennie.
You don't wanna put in the work, Ennie.
Most of these insults are purely from the parts of my subconscious that hate me but they still manifest in the shape of people. Shadows that criticise me and how little I want to work every day.
It's not that I hate the everyday. I daydream about the everyday. About relishing in the minutiae of a quotidian lifestyle. But that is a daydream. A universe in my head that has not yet been realised. No, what has been realised is my bed. And my sheets. And their warmth. Pulling me further into my dreams.
And this cycle is something that I have learnt to live with in hopes of avoiding further failure. When you learn to live with something that you’re scared of, it is because you’re afraid of change. More specifically, change that doesn’t amount to anything successful.
Let’s say I got over my boredom. Let’s say, I build a routine. A semblance of societal normalcy. And then, in three months, a minor inconvenience ruins this. I’m momentarily unhappy but it feels infinite. It feels as though I’ve failed.
And thus, we begin again. Back at square one, where I’ve learnt to accept my hopelessness as something to live with instead of something to change.
I would say that my writing this newsletter is the beginning of change. I really would. But that means that I’m promising you something that I can’t be sure of.
I’ve realised that I’m what one would consider a momentary person. Someone that spontaneously gets their shit together. In the spirit of honesty, I’ve been writing this newsletter for about two months now. This is partly because of external disturbances but also internal ones, as I’ve been explaining so far. And whether or not these disturbances can be considered good excuses is really none of my business. If my brain is immobile, so is my body, and the willpower to write something of substance is the farthest thing from my mind
.
To conclude, I love this newsletter. And I love thinking about writing it. So I’m going to try to continue doing so. Whenever that is, however that is. And I hope you stay with me to see where that goes.
<3,
Ennie.
In Other News…
I’ve been aggressively writing stories since I moved in April. (don’t ask me why I couldn’t write this newsletter during that time as well, I don’t have an answer for you). I’ve between alternating between three projects as of late, focusing mostly on fleshing them out as actual stories with actual characters and actual plots.
I read my first Salley Rooney book (I actually finished it yesterday). It was aggressively okay for me personally, a solid 3 out of 5. I had an inkling that I wouldn’t have been as drawn to it, however, the prose was intriguing at some points which is why my rating isn’t too low. Unfortunately, I am not a Sally stan, but I appreciate her style and how well she’s been able to build on it. I thought the plots trailed off a little bit, without any actual direction. Now that I think about it, it kind of, sort of makes sense. Like in the way a conversation with a friend would endlessly trail off and inevitably sift back into the mundane of everyday life, which is kind of how the book ended. mundanely.