For quite a long time, I thought my low mood was due to:
- Poor work and living environments (e.g., inadequate lighting, noise, etc.)
- Unpleasant people around me
- Being unable to do things I wanted to do
- Being forced to do things I didn’t want to do
Over the past month, all these issues have improved—every day has been wonderful:
- I rented the best affordable apartment I could find; I wake up each morning to birdsong, my workspace is very spacious, and I recently added a small potted plant.
- My colleagues are all friendly.
- I’m doing every day what I want to do—whether it’s work, study, or leisure.
- For tasks I don’t want to do, I can simply pay others to handle them for me.
Yet, over the past half-month, I’ve been staying up extremely late every night, spending large chunks of time consuming fragmented content. I complain about myself while simultaneously being unable to stop—until I slipped once again into a 3-day “emo” slump: refusing food and drink, avoiding communication. Only today did I snap out of it—so I’m quickly documenting this.
This is a behavioral pattern I’m already very familiar with—but what’s causing it?
