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These past few days I woke up with a heavy heart and realizing that I haven't been enjoying my job the way I did when I first started working. I found myself losing interest in everything, from playing video games to watching movies to fooling around with the boyfriend. My eyes are open but I can't feel a thing. I am but a walking dead man wondering around thinking if this is just one of those depressive days or my transition into facing a quarter life crisis.

You might think: it's normal to feel off, to feel down and lost. I know it is and yet, here I am, sitting in my work desk typing a blog and feeling numb and empty. I have lost my focus, my spirit and my willpower to perform well in my profession. I look at my monitor screen, a sleek iMac retina display staring back at me and I feel nothing. Nothing at all. I feel tired, exhausted even and drained. Mentally drained. I pause and stare at my work. My responsibilities are screaming back at me, telling me to get a grip and finish them. But I minimize my programs and open YouTube instead, plug my earphones in and listen to a bunch of cold cases, unsolved true crime videos and paranormal encounters chiming into my eardrums, eerie background music playing behind the scene while I let my responsibilities turn into cold cases of my own.

I am not bored, at least I don't think I am. I just feel restricted and caged inside a box, like I'm not allowed to experiment much because thinking outside the box is not something people of this country usually do. I want to experiment and be limitless. I want to explore my design, try new things and create something people usually hide away from because they are scared of something new, of changes. Most people want to stick with the existing syllabus because it's something proven to be profitable — because it's safe. I, on the other hand, am tired of redundancy. As a creative and a person in general, I hate feeling restricted. I hate to be restricted. My ideas are chained to borders and edges, my mind locked inside a box built on fixed width and height and my passion, my passion is poisoned to a slow burn death. Or so it feels like lately.

I leaned my head against the side window of my car. The street lights are running, the sky is dark and my mind is all over the place. I listened to my Spotify playlist, one I called Night Shades, and let each song passed by without me paying any attention. My eyes sailed across the people by the street, all the street food vendors and the less fortunate. I began to think about the people who work in office towers, individuals who had to clock in their attendance and those who had to work from 9 to 5. Are they happy with their job? Are they smiling when they talk about their job? Are they proud of what they do? I wonder how many of us are actually happy with what we're doing now.

"I'm thinking about resigning next year," the words slipped as easily as one-two-three. To my surprise, my mother did not yell in protest. Instead, she told me words I never expected to hear, "if you don't like it (there), don't force it." I gave her a short shrug, a brief "I'm not sure" and went for a warm shower. Fog stained the mirror in my bathroom and I spaced out. Do I really want this? What happened? I was so proud and happy for the first few weeks, first few months even. So what is happening now? I took a day off from work and spent the whole day lying down on my bed, thinking about all of the problems in my life. 1729730192849 of them.

I'd like to think this is just a phase, like all the moments when we doubt ourselves and feel like the world is against us. We watch our neighbors, our friends, our relatives; we watch strangers and other families, people we do and do not know and think: the grass is greener on the other side of the fence we are surrounded with. No matter how much I doubt myself and the job I have now, it's not something I can easily delete and replace. Finding a job today is not as easy as it used to be and life in itself is a needy little parasite that clings onto whatever is left in your bank account. Quitting is not an option, at least not for me. Not now, I told myself. If I quit, where will I go? Where will I work? How will I feed myself and prevent my bank account from collecting dust? The questions are grey clouds hovering above my head and if I quit, rain will start to pour down on me. I will be soaked in regret.

My boyfriend told me this is just a phase and so, I choose to believe it. Some of you probably think that I am too spoiled for my own good, that I had almost waved the white flag too easily, too fast. I know, everybody else is asking the same thing too: what am I really doing with my life? Some of us step inside the train (or bus), others dial an Uber or drive themselves down south or up north. Some of us clock in from 9 to 5, others show up any time they like. Some of us stay behind while everybody else leaves first while others are lucky enough to work remotely from home. Whatever it is, all of us are trying to survive even if it's a job we aren't really happy about. In the end, this is about survival and the consequences of unemployment, the risk of having bills to pay because Life takes and takes until we are left penniless, abandoned to rot and die.

I doubt myself, every single time. I doubt about whether or not this is where I belong, whether or not I perform well or badly at work. I ask questions about myself as a person and a creative designer. The answer is, there is none. There is no answer because even the man in a perfectly ironed suit who takes the public bus or the woman who sits behind her desk trying to micromanage things or the fifty-year old couple who sells food by the street — they continue to do what they do because they have to. Perhaps they love it, perhaps they don't. Whatever it is, circumstances are the ones that keep us going. As for me, I'd like to believe that my passion is currently in its hibernating state and there's nothing I can do but to walk forward. Who knows, maybe I'll find it back — that feeling of excitement when I first got accepted into this job. After all, a friend of mine once told me that we don't have to figure everything all at once.