Lately I've been wondering what the point of it all is. Not in a dark way, just in a Tuesday afternoon way. I wake up, commute, sit in meetings, commute home, watch something, sleep. Repeat. Everyone online seems to have a purpose or a passion. I just have a routine and a decent sofa. Is it normal to feel this flat about everything at 29?
— Anonymous, 29Ah, the Tuesday afternoon existential crisis. Lighter than the 3am model, more common than the midlife edition, and usually triggered by a meeting that could have been an email and somehow became two.
The bad news: yes, most of life is this. Commute, meetings, commute, sofa. The universe is fourteen billion years old, will carry on for trillions more, and your contribution so far is a decent sofa. The universe doesn’t care about the sofa. The people online with burning passions also have a commute. They just don’t film the bus.
Everyone with “purpose” in their bio is also eating cereal over the sink at 9pm. The algorithm crops that bit out.
Purpose is a terrible starting point. Nobody finds it by sitting still and thinking about it, which is exactly what you’re doing, on the sofa. People stumble into meaning by doing small, slightly pointless things. Joining something. Helping someone. Meaning turns up while you’re busy, like a cat, or a bill.
So here’s your grain of sense, and I’ll only say it once: do one new small thing a week. A class. A walk. A call to the person you keep meaning to ring. And if the flatness hangs around for weeks, or gets heavier rather than just dull, tell a GP or someone you trust. That isn’t dramatic. That’s maintenance, and you’re overdue.