Could you tell me a time you felt uninspired?

Freshly graduated, charmingly naive and armed with wildly unrealistic expectations is probably how I would describe my foray into the working world. After spending a whole summer indulging in let’s say quite hedonistic pleasures I came back to London with a job, back in the family home and with the expectation that life would effortlessly slot into place. I’m always very honest about the fact that I adored my degree. I was consistently academically challenged, inspired and pushed. So it only felt right that any job I would work would also be consistently challenging, interesting and inspiring.

My first 6 months out of university were quite bluntly miserable. I found it really difficult to come to terms with the fact that I not only hated the job I had so quickly accepted because I was scared of being unemployed but that I was quite frankly bored out of my mind. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my career and after a pretty uncomfortable experience with a colleague things started to head down hill.

Slowly, I felt anxiety and apathy creep into parts of my life. Every grad scheme I applied for or masters I looked at started to feel overwhelming and unachievable. I felt trapped in the monotony of working life, quite literally counting the hours until I could leave. I felt anxious to see friends as I was so uninspired by what I was doing. I think the weirdest manifestation of this all was when I remember expressing a real fear to my sister that I’d run out of things to say to my friends if I saw them too regularly because I didn’t feel like I had exciting news or updates all the time. I’d like to say I’m quite good at checking in on my mental well-being but I couldn’t help but feel completely panicked about how low I was feeling. I coined it the “is this it??” feeling. I would think, is this what life is like now?

I decided to book into therapy sessions offered to staff at work and I kid you not it took me approximately 0.5 seconds to burst into tears upon sitting down. As a psychology student it’s very easy to advocate for mental health services and wellbeing and forget to follow the advice yourself. My sessions were immensely helpful in dissecting and coming to terms with my feelings. I had put such huge expectations on myself to immediately be certain of what would be my passion for the rest of my working life I felt like I had failed at the first hurdle. But importantly, I also realised that work didn’t need to be the only thing to bring me joy. No wonder I was uninspired, I completely neglected the other things and activities that used to bring me joy. 

One coping strategy I have when I’m feeling trapped is to plan to go travelling to very far away countries - yes, I know, quite literally running away from the problem. Therapy ended, excitingly I got a new job and also booked a trip to Bali (shock) because what could be more inspiring than a distraction trip away now the seeming source of my anxiety was gone! Sadly covid had other plans for me and Bali but it gave me the most unique opportunity. 6 months of completely free time. Lockdown encouraged me to finally give myself time to think about what it really was I wanted to do with my time rather than focusing on what I thought I should be doing with it. No applying for jobs, no revising for exams, completely free time. I took some online courses, got really into running and yoga and read a lot. It was the kickstart I needed to remind myself that this time, I  couldn’t use my usual distractions or blame a shit job, ultimately I needed to inspire myself, and that was pretty cool. 

I absolutely can’t say I’ve got it perfected now. I still regularly worry that I’m in the wrong career or that I should run away to travel the world or that my life isn’t exciting enough all the time. But I don’t get those “is this it” pangs nearly as much. You can be inspired by things that you do everyday, the people around you, or you might get your inspiration from something you’ve not even tried yet. How exciting is that! But if I could leave you with one small piece of advice it would be to remember that you’re doing life the way you want to do it and that’s also pretty inspiring in itself.