Lamenting over my degree and other life choices

Well, the weather might suggest otherwise, as we’re still seeing bouts of summery sun and clear skies, but with soggy slow days becoming more common I notice an internal sluggishness and general sinking feeling seeping back into my demeanour — which is how I know that, despite what Buienradar might suggest, autumn has started.

Perhaps it’s more a product of the academic year restarting and the frivolous fun of the summer becoming a thing of the past, but of course the drab weather doesn’t help as we try to retain our last shreds of motivation. I think it's almost oxymoronic, the new school year starting just as the seasonal year is rounding up. It causes this mismatch of pace; fast and rushed as all the bouts of work and productivity flood every day, but also slow and deliberate as the days become shorter and our body clocks begin telling us to cozy up and sleep through the cold months to come.

Of course, this cannot be helped (well, in my home country the school year starts with the calender year just as God intended. I’m only half joking) and we've managed to trudge through this cycle for many years already, so what’s one more, sure.

But I find that, regardless of how much I genuinely love what I do and cannot imagine doing anything else (except of course for everything else, but being a renaissance man isn’t quite what it once was) I still find myself, at the beginning of the year, feeling a bit sullen about it all. Not because I regret my choices, about my programme or the city, not even all the little things in between (like choosing to commute, my entire fall wardrobe, life itself—you get it) but because I can’t help but wonder about what else is possible, what the other outcomes would have been. And this is the least productive thing in the world: grieving a reality that never existed.

(Makes me think about the tweet by @/NYTFanForLife: “If something that didn’t happen, happened, there would have been a different result” profound take.)

But at times like these I like to think that Hippocrates was right, and that my melancholic disposition is just a product of overwhelming amounts of imbalanced black bile in my system, so to anyone feeling similar:  maybe get your spleen checked out.

But removed from this humorist diagnosis on melancholy, I would suggest rather it might just be a sign of the times, and that things really are just terribly busy and because this is my first time, and yours as well (probably), living this life, it's natural to doubt, slow down and reconsider. Even if it feels like it imposes on your current productivity or motivation, I like to think that if after these bouts of uncertainty any feeling at all of clarity or newfound comfortability in your surroundings and choices is reached, then maybe it was the best possible thing for your future self.

Let us hope autumn is kind to us, as we should be kind to ourselves, and take it as a time for mental and physical indulgence.