9to5 (dot cc)

When you keep repeating “Be Better” to yourself over and over again.

I’ve been thinking a lot about depression. This is probably because we recently marathoned through the new Bojack Horseman this last week. I am relatively confident that I’m not depressed.

Relatively.

I do often think that there’s something wrong with my brain, but then I also think that I’m not unique in my mental struggles in any way. Maybe in 2017 this is just how our brains are, you know?

How do we even now what a “right” brain feels like? There have been studies done that say that bouncing around from task to task is not actually productive. How there’s a cognitive loss every time we jump from focus to focus that means that conversation you’re having while checking 5 things on your phone and watching television is probably not that good for you. Or rather, it might not be bad for you, but you’re brain just can’t handle all of those things efficiently.

So you’re really not giving that person you probably care about (in this scenario you’re talking to someone you actually like) a good amount of your precious brain juice.

I can’t readily find a link to it, but there have also been studies that show that our brains are just not capable of properly processing all of the world news that we’re exposed to. We just don’t have the capacity to care for absolutely every bad thing that we know about.

That’s got to take some kind of toll on us as well.

So yeah, ultimately, my brain often feels kind of messed up.

I think about a given week, like this one and freak out that I didn’t accomplish enough. Or even that I didn’t experience enough. That without some kind of concrete moment to cling to this week, like many others, will be a failure.

I want to read more books. I want to watch more movies. I want to write more. I want to be more productive at work. I want to do more interviews for the website. I want to work on the website more.

And that’s just want I want to do in my immediate, personal life.

That doesn’t even account for the fact that I feel like every single little thing that I do makes no difference to the world at large. A world that probably needs even the barest amounts of positivity injected into it to offset the mountains of bad news that we face on a day-to-day.

I should give more to charity.

All I know is that I just keep repeating “Be Better” to myself quite often these days. And it never feels like it’s enough.

 

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.