The Ache of Stillness

Stagnation, self-judgment, and the fine line between resting and rotting

My body aches from inaction. If I stay still much longer, I won’t just be metaphorically stuck—I’ll be physically immobile too. Creaky, in need of oil at the joints. Or maybe it’s not stiffness but something else, something deeper. Maybe I’ve been slowly freezing in place. If that’s the case, how do I thaw myself out?

It sounds like my body is craving movement—not just physically but in some existential way. The aches aren’t just from inaction; they’re from stagnation. I have never been as physically unfit as I am right now. Hibernation has been my anxiety response of late. Maybe the first step isn’t a grand overhaul. I already know what kinds of movement that don’t make me immediately want to do absolutely anything else—I just need to find my way back to them. Maybe it’s stretching in the morning, loosening one tight place at a time. Thawing isn’t instant. Warmth builds slowly. Maybe it starts with breath, with music that makes me want to move, with stepping outside just to feel the air. Maybe it’s finding movement that feels like me—something that doesn’t feel like punishment but like freedom.

But I’m not just stuck physically. The metaphorical stuckness might be even harder to shake. It’s like my mind has frozen in place alongside my body, and I’m not sure how to make the first crack in the ice. Maybe that’s because movement—both literal and figurative—feels overwhelming when I’ve been still for so long.

I have made “living at home with my parents at the ripe old age of 36” my identity. I wonder how much of that is self-imposed versus shaped by external expectations. The likely answer is both. It affects everything I do. It is the version of stuckness I’m most judgmental about. I’ve been so mean to myself about living at home. I think of everything someone could say about it, and I think it first, so they can’t hurt me. But all that does is make me hurt myself. And it keeps me frozen.

And there’s the other part—the freezing. The way preemptively beating myself up doesn’t actually shield me, it just cements the feeling of being unable to move forward. Because if everything I do is seen through the lens of I still live at home, then it becomes harder and harder to imagine a version of myself outside of it.

It’s not just about societal expectations but also personal ones. For one of the first times in my life, I have no idea what’s next, and that is both exciting and terrifying. This lack of certainty, the absence of a clear script, makes living at home feel like a glaring reminder of my stagnation. But the real fear isn’t just about where I physically am. It’s about the open-endedness, the in-between space, the reality that I don’t yet know what comes next.

Maybe part of thawing is softening toward myself. Letting go of the idea that living with my parents isn’t a failure instead of just a circumstance, a chapter, not the entire story.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if personal transformation and historical upheaval go hand in hand. Maybe it’s not just me who feels stuck, but the world itself, caught in the tension between collapse and whatever comes next. A society can be imploding in massive, visible ways while people still fall in love, go to work, argue with their friends, make art. It feels insane, but it’s a reminder that catastrophe and mundanity have always existed side by side.

But it’s important to ask: whose collapse are we talking about? When people (especially in Western media) say “unprecedented crisis,” they’re usually talking about white, middle-class comfort crumbling—not the systemic violence and oppression that’s already been daily reality for so many. The framing of what counts as a crisis versus just “the way things are” is itself deeply political.

Which makes me wonder: maybe stuckness is just another way of framing something. I see my life as stalled, frozen, unmoving—but what if it’s just transition? What if my frustration at still being here, still feeling trapped, is the growing pain of something shifting? What if thawing and collapse aren’t opposites but part of the same process?

Not just oh god, everything is falling apart, but: what does it mean to keep making choices, to keep experiencing joy or frustration, to still have deeply personal problems that feel enormous, even against a crumbling backdrop?

Because yeah, it feels impossible to write about anything except what’s currently going on in this country. But at the same time, the decline of the country doesn’t stop life from happening. And in a way, writing about life—messy, contradictory, absurdly normal—is also writing about collapse.

Maybe the real first step in thawing is just acknowledging that movement is still happening, even when I don’t feel it.
Even when I’m stuck.
Even when the world is falling apart.

boredom now feels like some kind of human rights violation

recently watched and loved this horror romcom, Your Monster

my latest hobby/art hyperfixation is lino-cut printmaking. the carving of the linoleum is as close as my brain lets me get to meditating