The to-do lists cannot communicate with each other. I have a five-year plan that nags me every day, but none of it overlaps with the daily task list. Fretting about my supposed long-term goals of completing my book proposal and my novel takes up so much mental energy that basic jobs—paying bills even if I do have the money, filing taxes, changing the sheets, giving the university some document or other—become herculean tasks. I pull at single strands of my hair constantly, unrelentingly, an old habit that fills the ever-expanding moments I spend not doing the things on the to-do lists. The days are remarkably dark; I never knew that I would spend days not seeing the sun. In the dark, it becomes impossible to focus on what is important, and I fret, seized by a nameless fear, a nothing-tightness, that hugs my chest at all times. This nameless fear becomes the subject of much amicable conversation in my New York world, so different from the hectic world of underfunded nonprofits for low-income housing development that I left behind in Bombay. My Bombay life offered little time for self-analysis, and even less indication that I was important, and therefore little time for anxiousness about whether how we spent our time justified our importance; but here, this nameless fear becomes not only a constant internal presence but also, as a perennial subject of conversation, a kind of social currency. The feeling is so omnipresent it would be odd, almost inconsiderate, not to have it, like showing up at a white elephant party with no gift.

[...] I take to cocktails. These seem the most efficient self-care practice, at least until I switch to just whiskey (better value for money). After my seventh night in a row blacking out, I go to campus counseling.

I sit there in the office, filling out forms. I do not know what to do, how to be, here. I know only that I am anxious and do not know why. The therapist I am assigned tells me I have to take it slow, go easy on myself. One step at a time. Even if it’s something as small as getting up and moving your dishes from your desk to the sink, she says. That’s a feat too.

I take a deep breath and imagine getting up, just to move my dishes from my desk to the sink: just a minute, and then it will be over. I can do this, I think, and it will be a feat, an action of worth.

But I am not convinced that it should be—I am not convinced that getting out of bed should be a job I can say I accomplished, that going easy on myself is the best advice. Focusing on my own feelings about my life—the endless anxieties and provocations from the world—rather than about other things, seems to be distracting me, making me lose my ability to prioritize at all. I feel further than ever from being better.

we have to be careful while doing so not to abjure the very sense of agency that we would need to sustain such a revolt

If the satisfaction of an old man drinking a glass of wine counts for nothing, then production and wealth are only hollow myths; they have meaning only if they are capable of being retrieved in individual and living joy. The saving of time and the conquest of leisure have no meaning if we are not moved by the laugh of a child at play.

I want to look, really look, at the world—but I find I do not want to look at it as an explanation for what is wrong with me. I don’t want to be forgiven. I want unkindness, from myself and from the world, because it is unkindness that has to be reckoned with, that makes me feel awake. I want to be punished; I want the stimulation of struggle. But it seems in order to do this I have to consider that the world does not owe me anything. I want to look at the world because despite the fact that it is unkind, it is also interesting, and full, and endlessly entertaining.

I forget this, during my worst winter and my most unmotivated months; I forget that there are stories to be chased that have nothing to do with me. I ask my therapist to help me remember these stories, these reasons to get out of bed in the morning. I ask her to help me re-want to learn about the world again—about literature, and philosophy, and ideas that continue to exist and exhilarate no matter how much money I have or will ever have, no matter how overworked I am and will certainly continue to be forever. She says that I am focusing on other things because I do not want to talk about myself: about how the boy I loved that winter had disappeared, about why I am fighting with my mother or about the fact that I am drowning in job applications. I need to do something nice for myself, she says, over and over again.