Uni, Work, Blogging - When Life Suddenly Becomes Too Overwhelming

Sitting down to work on a blog post feels somewhat weird, I've got to admit. I've tried to write this post several times, and always decided that it wasn't good enough and that I'd have to come back to it.
 The last time I published fresh content for my blog was in the middle of September, which is now over five months ago.
Yes, I'm really ashamed; and I feel like I owe you an explanation for just disappearing into thin air like that.

It's not like I fell out of love with blogging, it was quite the opposite. I'd still come up with ideas I wanted to turn into content, and I still wanted to keep up with bloggers I'd adored forever, who inspired me and made me want to do better.

I couldn't even tell you how I started spiraling. I feel like my major crisis both slowly crept up on me as well as washed over me like a wave. Suddenly it all happened so quickly, and what felt like all at once.

I started my first job in September in order to pay for uni at least partly by myself, and while I honestly really love and enjoy the work I do, it's still a job, and a job in retail at that - I came home and was so exhausted, physically and mentally, that I hardly managed to clean myself up before crawling into bed, and woke up feeling just as exhausted in the morning, especially during my first month.

Then uni began. I tried to be optimistic about it, told myself that it was a fresh start, a growth opportunity. And I was eager to learn new things, especially because I had taken a leap of faith and decided to study the things I'm really interested in - English, Politics and Sociology.

But, me being my introvered, anxiety-ridden self, I was so incredibly overwhelmed by the whole experience. I go to uni in a city about an hour from where I live, so everything was new for me - the place, the people, and of course, the courses.

I managed to find some new friends, which I'm so incredibly thankful for because going through this first semester completely by myself would probably have run me into the ground.
My courses, and the expectations our professors held, were something else.

I did very well in high school, I can't deny that - and I knew that I wasn't dumb. But when I got to uni, everyone seemed super smart, and they made these incredibly intelligent contributions during lectures I was so damn lost in, I felt like I was taking for Chinese, not English.

After the first week, having cried at least once every single day, either out of exhaustion, or out of frustration, or simply out of how freaking overwhelmed I was, I honestly considered dropping out. I know, it sounds pathetic and over dramatic, and normally, I'm no quitter, but I felt so alone and daft and sad that I was convinced I had made a huge mistake when I enrolled.

In the end, I didn't do it. As I said, I'm no quitter - but it was mostly my obsessive perfectionism that stopped me from walking away from something I had yet to finish. What also helped a lot was talking friends from school and finding out that they all felt the same even though we're all studying completely different things.

With the decision to stay came a lot, and I mean a lot of work I wasn't prepared for. I honestly couldn't remember a day where I had more than the 20 minutes I'd spend in the bath to myself when all the hours in my day went towards studying or working. Outside of uni or work, I as an individual person basically stopped exisiting.

I thought about my blog a lot during this time, and I've been wishing to have time to come back to it, but amongst all my confusion, trying desperately not to fall behind in my classes and general quarter-life crisis, there simply wasn't enough time in the day or will power left within me.



Now that I've already taken six out of my seven final exams and my semester break has already begun, I've finally had time to sort out my life and with that, come back to this hobby of mine I've been missing so badly.

I've spent the past few days making over and updating my blog, creating mind maps and journal pages that I hope will help me reboot this baby, and slowly making my way back into social media.

I don't know if any of the people who used to read my blog, whether regularly or occasionally, remember me or if I have been forgotten in the huge sea that is the blogger world.

But I am determined to work my way back to creating content I hope to be inspiring, helpful or simply entertaining to read, and I wholeheartedly hope that, even if you might not have come across my little corner on the internet yet or have forgotten that it exist, you will have me back and come on this journey of rediscovering blogging with me.