Warning: brief reference to feeling suicidal, discussions of pointlessness, grief, mental health, existentential dread, and all the things that make up the general sh**ty state of the world.
Things have been tough for me, lately.
When you lose someone you love... it's damned hard.
Everything feels pointless - if that can happen to them, then what is the point of anything?
What's the point of writing a blogpost? What's the point of writing anything?
And since my purpose in this life is to read and to write... if I can't find the point of that, then what's the point of me?
(...I'm actually an optimist, if you can believe that. I just have mental health issues, and have been through some tough sh**.)
The thing is... when the pointlessness really crashes into you, it feels like falling.
Only, like, a being-smothered kind of falling? Like you can't breathe under the weight of the meaninglessness of the world.
It's all-consuming. And even keeping your eyes open seems to have no point.
And I've yet to find anyone who can come up with an argument that helps with that.
(And trust me, hearing 'that's a normal part of grief' is NOT helpful - like, yeah? But what do I do about it?!)
I don't mean to bring you down.
There are enough things bringing all of us down.
It feels like the whole world right now has this nihlism, end-times, sense-of-doom, thing going on.
And we have for a while, haven't we? Despite the glimmers of hope through the dense trees.
It's hard to fight this sense of pointlessness when the news is full of... just the grimmest stuff.
War and death and genocide and fascism.
...Doesn't really do much to lift the mood, does it?
And while the politicians are squabbling amongst themselves, so many of us feel like we're living in a strange and surreal version of the post-apocalyptic stories you find in books and films and TV...
...only this time the world carried on, the same but different. Worse. With more fascists, and more fools willing to vote for them.
And there's this feeling that we're not done sinking yet - that rock bottom is waiting for the human race...
Sorry.
I've been prone to existential crises for a long time, but the existential dread has just grown and grown lately. I know I'm not the only one that's true for.
But... I tried to look up studies of existential dread, while I was writing this post, and... there aren't any?
Not on a general societal, or philosophical, level, anyway - it's always linked to specific disorders, or 'the effects of existential threats on [insert thing here].'
...And that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about that creeping sense of impending doom that will be familiar to so many of us.
You only have to hang around on social media to feel the vibes - there's despair out there.
The zeitgeist is pain and fear and the feeling that something, somewhere, has gone fundamentally wrong.
And on a personal level - pointlessness feels sh**.
It feels truly awful. And while a little nihilism of 'oh sh** this timeline is the worst' is helpful as a coping mechanism, when that pointlessness and meaninglessness really takes hold... it's not good.
It feels really bad - like, I have had suicidal moments which have felt less horrendous than the sense of total pointlessness that swamps me sometimes.
Pointlessness, at that level, is the worst of the Depression feelings.
So, where does that leave us?
Honestly? No clue.
I know that that pointless feeling won't last forever, that we just have to wait it out, fight it off when we can. But... it always seems to come back.
Both personally and societally, we're all a little bit lost.
But that's OK - we just have to keep putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other. Even when it feels pointless - it isn't. We're headed somewhere, we just don't know where yet.
(...told you, Depressed optimist, right here 😅)
The next Nerd Church post will be on 7th September 2025, hopefully I'll see you there!
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