Time check: 01:00 AM on a Monday. 

I know I should be sleeping and resting since it's the start of the work week. But instead, here I am still wide awake -- my body, mind, and soul running on survival mode. 😔

I always thought that I would do well during times when I feel negative emotions or when life throws me lemons. I am very familiar with the power of meditation and journaling for dealing with overwhelming surges of emotions. However, maybe theoretical skills just don't always translate into practical skills. 😅 Like right now, I should have placed into practice all the things I learned about mindfulness, but instead I found myself here, in the early hours of the morning, having an emotional meltdown.

For the last several hours, I have been trying to sleep. But my mind is running around in a feast giving me all the intrusive thoughts in the world, as my eyes continuously flowed with tears. Honestly, I don't know who my enemy is anymore. Do you know that feeling when something feels too good to be true, you nitpick out things that you might be missing something? I found myself looking into the details and finding loopholes that I might be neglecting or missing out. It's my brain's way of trying to protect myself from getting hurt, and so I zoom in to every action to see if there's something I need to be alert of. I gave in to intrusive thoughts, and things went out of control. There are things I did that I think are irreversible now, but thankfully, I still had the presence of mind to not further incur damage. I think I made the right choice to unplug because I feel like the online noise is just feeding the beast inside of me.

And so here I am again, back to my online haven, my safe sanctuary, which I have actually ignored for months now. I think I would spend more time here, to further digest my emotions and really see where I want to go from here.

I want to be busy with work. I want to focus more on my hobbies. I want to invest more in myself. Currently, I'm drowning in responsibilities. My to-do list is getting longer every day, and my commitments to people are piling up. There's just really a lot of things going on. Many new things have been introduced in my life, and I have a whole different set of responsibilities and commitments. However, what's clear now to me as I go on writing this entry is that I want to return to writing and setting goals, because those activities have always been my guide to my North Star. Those activities made me feel like my life has a purpose and those provided a kind of fulfillment that I needed.

I guess it's clear now. I am going back to this safe sanctuary that I have been with for more than a decade. I need more time for myself, more time to arrange my thoughts without any input from social media or  an AI chatbot. 😅 That would help me digest and figure out what I really want out of life in general. Of course, I would reach out to people that care about me, in every form that I might be in. I am very grateful to have them in my life. I want to break down the things I need to do and move forward with actions that align with my life's purpose, one step at a time. I believe in myself, and I believe that I will get there in time.