I am going to write this blog with utmost honesty and vulnerability.

Nothing in my life makes sense to me right now. I work from home, and most of my time is split between work and rotting in bed. I keep ordering food from outside, and I am basically addicted to it. I am spending a massive amount of money on food that I do not need, while actively fucking up my health. I also keep shopping online. While the things I buy make my life easier and more comfortable, they are also part of a consumerist culture that keeps convincing me I need more. As Tyler Durden says, “We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession.” I have become obsessed with planning and making my systems more effective, but I waste all my time trying to make those systems work smoothly. By the time I am done building solutions, I have no energy or motivation left to do the real work that would help me progress in my job. The smallest things irritate me. I do not really like talking to people. I am getting fatter every day, and the more time I spend at home, the more isolated I want to become. I do not feel confident in my body or in showing up in the outside world. I spend my days scrolling through Instagram, watching Netflix, watching YouTube, and not really feeling excited about anything. Most days, I feel brain fog and sadness about my life.

I have been in an existential crisis for more than eight years. I keep wondering what the right way to live is. I keep depending on people, YouTube videos, and books to tell me how to live my life and how to figure out the social conundrum I feel trapped in. But I do not want to live according to social validation. That seems like such a sad way to live. Everyone has different opinions—about us, about themselves, about everyone else, and about how the world should work. It is completely impossible to be liked by everyone. I am exhausted from thinking and overthinking. My brain keeps spinning. I keep creating different methods that are supposedly going to change my life, but after planning all of them, I am so exhausted that I do not want to make any changes at all. I wanted to understand where I stood health-wise. My body-fat percentage came out to 36%, which is critically obese, while my BMI is around 21 and technically in the normal range. That contrast does not make me feel reassured. It makes me feel like I have ignored my health for too long. I also keep comparing my salary to people earning more than me. I put myself down for doing such a shit job and earning such a shit salary. I constantly feel like I am lagging behind everyone else.

I fixate on everything I lack. Affirmations, energy meditations, and all that bullshit do not make me feel better; they make me feel worse about the life I have right now. Even people I once trusted because I thought they were doing something noble have ended up trying to scam me. So much of it is a marketing scheme. Everyone is trying to sell something, including themselves. People say they enter this world to be of service—well, bullshit. The world is often a shitty place, and I think it is time I accepted that. I have spent most of my life being nice to people and believing that every perspective is valid because everyone has their own story. But who gives a shit? I want what I want, and nothing changes that fact. I am as human and as valid as every person with their own perspective, and I have my own too. I choose not to be offended by anyone in this world. They can say all the shit they want about me; they are out. In return, I will not say shit about them. That is my decision.

I am also my own enemy. At one point, I want one thing. Then, at another point, I want something completely different. Then I start craving the first thing again—until I realise there is a third thing I want, and it clashes with both of them. I keep pulling myself in different directions and then wondering why I feel stuck. Fuck everyone else’s expectations, sure—but fuck me as well. I am the one making this harder for myself too.

I have had suicidal thoughts. I have never acted on them, and I do not believe I ever would, but the thoughts are rooted in this long-running existential crisis and the feeling that I am exhausted by my own life. This blog is my journey toward building a life on my own terms—one where I do not give a fuck about what everyone else thinks of me. I will always be there for the people close to me. But if they have an opinion about how I should live my life, well, fuck them. If they think I am doing a shitty job, fuck them too—especially when they are often dealing with their own shit as well. I am tired of trying not to be a disappointment or a fucking failure to every person in this world: my parents, my family, my partner, my friends, my mentors, or random people on the internet. Most of them may not even be disappointed in me. But I am disappointed in myself.

I demand respect—not because my life depends on it, and not because I could not care less without it, but because anyone who wants to remain in my life needs to respect me. Without respect, people start superimposing their lives onto mine and expecting me to be a certain way. I will treat people with respect and kindness as long as I am treated that way. I am done trying to think everything through. I am done trying to make my life better through endless plans, productivity systems, meditation, manifestation, or someone else’s formula for happiness. I cannot control everything with my mind. I cannot think my way into a perfect life. This blog is a documentation of my journey of letting go: letting go of the things that get in the way of what actually matters to me, people who do not really give a shit about me, opinions about how I should live my life, and the need to do it all, be it all, and please everyone. As Mark Manson writes in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, “You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked.” We have a limited amount of fucks to give, so I want to choose carefully what deserves mine. I am done trying to control everything. I do not want to give a fuck about people’s judgments anymore. I want to build a life that is mine.