Post-submission Lethargy

After more than 3 years of effort, I have by the grace of God finally submitted my thesis to the postgraduate department. Currently I am awaiting my VIVA, to which, in the event I manage to pass, I will be graduating with a MSc in Engineering by this year.

It has been a few weeks since I handed in the necessary forms and hardcopy drafts. During this period of time, I have been more or less doing…well, basically nothing. Perhaps nothing is not quite the right word: I have hardly been doing anything meaningful or productive. Not counting the daily necessary activities (eating, sleeping, etc.), the majority of my time is spent on reading comics, watching Youtube, and playing games. There are still some journal papers to prepare, but the amount of work I put into them effectively made up less than 5 hours in total.

This is not the first time I have gone through this. A similar situation happened during my first 4 months semester break in Undergraduate. At that time I vaguely remember telling myself I would efficiently utilise it for writing my personal fiction or something of that sort. As can be guessed, it never worked out.

If there is one thing I learned from this and my previous experience, it is that such idleness leads to dangerous sinful activities. The fact that I long for something that will stimulate my mind, yet refuse to muster the effort to do anything often results in me whiling away my time on random clips which are hardly any use in adequately building up my knowledge in anything worthwhile. Even worse, I start indulging in morally questionable acts, to which I am clearly aware they are beginning to interfere with even my prayer/contemplation time.

Sometimes I wonder, what will it take to inspire me to get out of this stupor. Nothing I try seems to be able to hold my attention for long, or give me enough of a reason to pursue it. Heck, I am currently too lazy to even watch anime or continue reading my list of visual novels! Just how much of a slob can one person get? There are moments when I attributed it to the financial situation I am in, but that is such a poor excuse when I look at the conveniences and comfort God has showered me with even as I write this.

Now I wonder, whether the piece I am missing is proper companionship. Not a romantic one, just any normal relationship where I can freely talk to. Or better yet, one which shares the same interest in games, culture and theology. In my institution, I am almost always alone in the room, with an occasional visitor now and then. The only one who I constantly interact with is my PC.

But how can I find such a person? It is not as though I have not tried before; most who I reach out to do not reciprocate more than one reply. Admittedly, all of them are through online messaging. And I am no extrovert, nor do I have the means to spend freely with my very limited savings. At times I wish someone would magically appear just like it happens in manga.

Or maybe I should focus setting goals for myself and listing them out. Just that it does not seem to work as well as the times when I was in high school or college. I wonder why? Am I really losing motivation I life? Nothing truly worth living for?

Anyways, I guess I should cease my ranting now and actually put in more effort to find something worthwhile to do.

RFG always.

*Contemplation written a few weeks after 31 March 2018.