Every Year Goes and Comes

I had several websites where I used to post my diary entries here and there, but I have yet to continue with any of them. If I had a physical diary, my journal would probably look like a chaotic collection of loose papers. But why not? That, too, is a form of a diary.

Today, I had a meeting with my colleagues who started their PhDs a year before me. We both strongly agreed that we have either experienced or are currently experiencing some form of burnout, and that this might simply be part of the research process. I didn’t mention that I have been in this emotional crisis for a long time—that I’ve been holding onto a cliff with the last remnants of my energy. I became more aware of this when I tried to reorganise all my diary entries in one place. I don’t know what to say. My diary is filled with expressions of exhaustion and overwhelmingly dark emotions. It has continued like this since 2016, and it still does. Even before I started writing this, I felt as though I had nothing to write about except the same emotions I have been experiencing since 2016.

It was probably the same when I wrote in my diary as a teenager. But the only difference now is that I no longer write about fondness or love. I’m too exhausted to think about any emotion other than exhaustion.

It is already 2023—time rushing past at an unsettling, highway-speed pace. Who was it that said time exists only in our minds? Or in our brains? I no longer remember. But at the very least, there are three different kinds of time.

There is the time I think I have already experienced, which is different from the notion of the past. There is the time I am currently experiencing, layered with echoes of past experiences. And then there is the time that exists purely as sensation, governing the passage of moments.

Where is the present? I don’t believe there is such a thing as the present in our limited human perception.

Then, what is this whole idea of a new year about?