Being at home for the past week has taught me that too much comfort is counterproductive. Being under layers upon layers of warmth and protection initially felt so good. It was frankly hard to put up any resistance at all, and I pretty much “surrendered” myself on my first day back. As I sat in my all-to-familiar room, I felt my body sinking into the seat, releasing a long overdue sigh of contentment, a release of all the stress, worries, and doubts accumulated over the past few months. At long last, I was home. But as with any exhalation of breath, the release of tension can only go on for so long. One cannot keep exhaling forever. And if one tries to, all that’s left is an increasing amount of discomfort. What started as a blissfully happy Fall Break has turned into laziness, purposelessness, and discontent by the end. I was too comfortable for too long, and I think this needs to turn around before it’s too late.

With no pressures in the past week, being at home has turned my momentum into molasses, freezing ambition and stunting the growth of new ones with the allure of guaranteed comfort in the present. If everything I desired was already here, at home, why even try to do anything more? There was no accountability and no impetus other than to relax. Personal growth? Nah. Direction? Who cares?

Of course, it’s not like I completely collapsed on day one and did the most unproductive things in the world. Just coming back from an insanely productive schedule (even in my opinion), I still initially went through the motions, but with no concrete goals in place and the ever-present feeling that I should relax, I began drifting, regressing into the lazy rhythms of a typical summer with no obligations. My sleep schedule started shifting later, I started browsing Spotify on my phone again (the closest thing I have to social media), and I missed a workout, something I was surprisingly consistent with at CMU. I started wasting time again when there were clearly more productive and fulfilling pursuits available. My safety margins for my habits on Beeminder were gone, and I was constantly at risk of losing money for not hitting the bare minimum. (upd: I lost $5 cuz I slept too late in favor of hanging out with my parents for one last time (at least for the near future) before leaving again.)

And the thing is, if I was actually satisfied with indulging in the comforts available at the expense of a few missed obligations, that would be totally okay. But I wasn’t fine. The pleasures of comfort were fleeting, and as I had no concrete direction in life (probably a bigger issue than just what’s happening now) and no direction to begin searching for one, I sunk even lower and wasted more of my precious time chasing after fleeting pleasures. To be comfortable only seems to be good as a temporary measure, a brief moment of reprieve in the face of pain and suffering. But pursued for the sake of itself, comfort is shallow, meaningless, and unfulfilling.

To that extent, pain is good - it gives life meaning. One can only exhale when one has inhaled sufficiently. And if that’s true, under all the layers of sadness and grief of letting go, I can’t wait to be back. Hit me with the hardest assignments I’ve ever faced, and watch me struggle with my doubts, impulses, and insecurities, find my purpose, and work towards something for more than just myself.

It’s time to embrace the fire.

Footnote

It’s also interesting to note that my stress this week (as measured by my Garmin watch) has been significantly lower than my stress at CMU. (doing a 1-tailed 2-sample t-test yielded a p-value of 0.0001932, which I think is pretty darn significant no matter what reasonable value of alpha you use.) Unfortunately, I also took significantly fewer steps (p-value of 0.008792) during this week than the past few weeks before break, which is rather interesting as supposedly I had a lot more free time over break than before the break. What can I say? Fall break made me lazy.