Finding myself slipping back into old habits

I am falling into bad habits I thought I had gotten away from.

My old bad habits

Okay, so from when I was 13 until I was 17 I think I had a lot of bad habits.

My screen time was horrible, my grades were decreasing, I never moved my body, I kept binging, I spent my free time on social media, I never went out, my sleep schedule was bad, I wanted to kill myself, I had obsessive thoughts, and I had social anxiety. Anyways, it was the worst period of my life.

Thankfully, after keeping myself in a low state all these years and dreaming of a change, I decided at 17, that I needed to make a radical change in my life.

New habits

It’s something I did well. I lost 20kg, I was the top student in my class, I made friends, I started reading again, and I decreased my screen time. It was amazing. I felt like a new person. I thought I was finally free from these bad habits because I stuck to a new routine for more than a year.

When I started uni, I had no trouble making friends, going out, maintaining my hobbies, and studying. But I started to have an existential crisis by figuring out that I wanted to change my degree.

My first year of uni went well because at the beginning I liked the classes, I made some really good friends, and I was confident. But then my eating disorder got bad and I had some health issues which made this year kind of traumatizing in some ways, but I won’t bring this issue into this post.

Came back to bad habits

My summer of 2024 was weird. When I thought I got rid of social media, I started getting addicted to Twitter and, after stopping staying up late at night, I found myself scrolling on Twitter until 2am.

When I got back to uni, I found myself doing the worst thing ever in some classes, which is scrolling on my phone instead of listening to the class. It’s something I hated when I saw others doing it, so I don’t really know what’s gotten into me. I think seeing others having good grades after spending their day scrolling in class instead of listening to the teacher kind of triggered me. I started telling myself “Why don’t I scroll too?” Plus I was still studying for a degree I didn’t like, so it was a great combo to fry my brain. I also started using ChatGPT for my homework because again, I didn’t see why I should keep studying for a subject I don’t like, so why even try?

At that time, the only thing that kept me sane was my connection with God. If I hadn’t relied on God, I think I would’ve been pretty much dead by now.

Changing paths

Anyway, I started to make changes to switch to a path that I always wanted to do deep down in my heart since forever, which is nursing school. I wanted to be either a teacher or a nurse, so I don’t know who sent me to a business school.

I worked hard to get into nursing school, and all praise to God, I got into it.

I tried to make excuses for myself when I slipped into bad habits. I told myself that once I get into nursing school I will never use ChatGPT or any AI to study, I won’t distract myself, I’ll only focus on myself, I won’t scroll, I’ll eat healthy, I’ll move my body, and I’ll find time for my hobbies.

I can tell today that some of these are lies. I don’t know what happened, but I can barely recognize myself. Maybe I’m too mean to myself and I’m too focused on the mistakes I make, but sometimes it’s really getting out of hand.

I struggle with friendships because I feel like I’m drained and consumed by others’ energies. I can’t find the focus and time to study as I should. I keep scrolling during some lectures, I do anything except study. My attention span is so bad, I’m having an identity crisis every 2 days and I don’t know what’s gotten into me.

At the beginning I wasn’t like this, but I think hanging out with people who don’t match my energy and have these kinds of habits doesn’t help.

Dealing with pressure

Maybe it’s all this pressure that doesn’t help either, because I feel so much stress between my internships, my exams, my future, the fact that I have to know everything as a nursing student, seeing others saying that humans need connection and you have to make the first move to make friends (which I agree with, but I feel this pressure to absolutely have friends and force relationships when all I want is just to be), losing my best friends, hanging out with people who just graduated from high school when I graduated 2 years ago.

Spending my days with people I don’t feel like myself with and feeling performative with them doesn’t help either. I feel stuck and misunderstood and I feel like they have a false image of who I am. I don’t even know what kind of friends I want. Right now I just want to isolate myself without being mean so I can know what I want.

Bruuuuuuuuuuuh I don’t know how to manage things like I should.

My bad habits are draining me

Every time I start studying, I want to scroll on Youtube, Instagram, and everywhere. When I’m working out, I find myself scrolling in between sets. It’s horrible, I don’t know why I scroll like a zombie when I know how much it harms me and how bad it is for me. It’s like I can’t control it, and writing this actually makes me feel better because I can’t really bring this issue up with anyone, as my screen time is only between 1h30 and 3h a day, depending on whether it is a weekend or not. So when I want to talk about it with others, I don’t feel understood because they all have a screen time of more than 3 hours a day, and for everyone around me, I’m miss perfect who has good habits. It’s something I want others to see me as, but in reality, I’m far away from that.

I spent my spring break scrolling and having bad posture instead of studying and doing things that matter to me. I don’t know how much time I lost scrolling and watching content just because it popped up on my page.

I want to be more conscious, I want to break this cycle. I feel like I don’t think with my brain anymore.

Trying to stay sane

I still eat healthy, even though I could change some things about how I eat, not what I eat (but this has more to do with my eating disorder, so as I said, I’m not going to talk about that here). I still try to workout and go for walks (I do 7k-12k steps a day). I still read books (I’ve read 5 books since the beginning of the year), I still don’t use my phone first when I wake up in the morning, I still go out, I still try to hang out with my old uni friends. I still try to be creative in some ways (even though I could do better). But I don’t know, it never feels like enough and my phone is the damn problem, I hate it so much. And on the top of that I want to start a Youtube chanel and just create more content online, it’s a never ending cycle.

I just want to pause my life and go for a spiritual retreat in the mountains, because I feel like I’ve kinda moved away from God. I need His light to guide me because my soul feels lost.

I should be doing great because I have no reason to act the way I’m acting right now; I have everything to succeed, but anyway. I really needed to get this off my chest. My mind is buzzing, I hope I won’t scroll on Youtube after this post and click on the first video I see.

Thank you for reading, I hope some of this resonated a bit with you. I don’t know if I sounded weird in some parts, sorry.

I promise my next post will be less about me. I didn’t plan to post this, but I think it’s a little bit a cry for help, lol. Anyway, I’m sending love <3