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You ever get the feeling that you've done something horribly wrong or that you've forgotten something crucial, but as far as you can tell everything is actually fine? Cause I hate that.

I get a lot of that in my dreams.

I mostly feel unsettled in the sense that I should be doing something more amazing with my life. Why am I spending so much time doing mundane things?

Yeah, it sucks. I haven't had it as much lately. I'd get it more in high school/college when I felt there were certain things I needed to do in order to get to some important next step. But now that I have absolutely no idea what to do with my life the anxiety over forgetting something crucial is largely gone.

G. Keenan wrote:I'd get it more in high school/college when I felt there were certain things I needed to do in order to get to some important next step.

I still get that, although weirdly I didn't have that feeling in high school/college. Or at least I don't remember it, or it wasn't as acute. I guess at that point, I felt I was following a designated path. Now, it's all up to me, and I feel like I should have put more thought into it. Things have worked out well for me, but I feel that I have an enormous amount of freedom that I'm completely wasting. Strangely, I'm most likely to get the unsettled feeling after doing the kind of more adventurous things that I feel I should be doing more often.

Arthur Dent wrote:

G. Keenan wrote:I'd get it more in high school/college when I felt there were certain things I needed to do in order to get to some important next step.

I still get that, although weirdly I didn't have that feeling in high school/college. Or at least I don't remember it, or it wasn't as acute. I guess at that point, I felt I was following a designated path. Now, it's all up to me, and I feel like I should have put more thought into it. Things have worked out well for me, but I feel that I have an enormous amount of freedom that I'm completely wasting. Strangely, I'm most likely to get the unsettled feeling after doing the kind of more adventurous things that I feel I should be doing more often.

I know what you mean, but it's impossible to always be making the most of everything. I think there's almost always a dissonance between what we're actually doing and what we think we ought to be doing with our lives and it causes anxiety when we stop to think about it. But that's normal. I try to look at all the freedom I have now as a good thing. There are so many ways to be in the world, so many ways to make a life, that I'm increasingly less afraid of not picking the right one, or even picking one period. I think the best you can do is try to make the best decisions you can one at a time. Confidence in your ability to do that should take a lot of the anxiety away.

Michael wrote:I get a lot of that in my dreams.

I mostly feel unsettled in the sense that I should be doing something more amazing with my life. Why am I spending so much time doing mundane things?

Years from now, when you edit The Collected GatewayRedbirds.com Posts of sighyoung, Volumes 1-10 for Yale University Press, you'll really all this was time well spent.

From time to time I have a dream where for some reason I'm in college, and it's 3/4 of the way through the semester, yet I haven't done a single thing for a certain class. I haven't attended the class, I've done none of the homework or taken a test. Almost as if I've forgotten that I'm even enrolled in the class.

Really unsettling dream. And I'm positive that it's reflective of some project that I'm not getting done at work or at home. But as my "whatever--eff it" attitude grows each year, these dreams become less common.

Popeye_Card wrote:From time to time I have a dream where for some reason I'm in college, and it's 3/4 of the way through the semester, yet I haven't done a single thing for a certain class. I haven't attended the class, I've done none of the homework or taken a test. Almost as if I've forgotten that I'm even enrolled in the class.

I have this dream a lot.

I think it is because I'm in love with my mother. Or something.

pop_haines wrote:

Popeye_Card wrote:But as my "whatever--eff it" attitude grows each year, these dreams become less common.

So very true. I was much more unsettled when
I was younger. It's not that I don't give a crap,
it's just that I don't give so much.

Yeah, I used to be a little more uptight about things. Always having the feeling that I wasn't doing enough "productive" things with my time, or experiencing life. Now I just do whatever I feel like, and let whatever problems arise work themselves out. No use fretting over stuff that doesn't really matter in the long run.

I think a problem I have is that I don't feel unsettled enough.