your flop era is lowkey serving

how to make it through the dreaded flop

for some reason, i always seem to flop around this time of the year.

it’s just one of those periods when nothing seems to be going right: my clothes all feel boring and ugly, and i can’t seem put together a single good outfit for the life of me these days. my daily screen time has been absolutely diabolical. the end-of-semester decline in motivation has been getting to me—i mentally cannot find it in me to study and am quite cooked for final exams (and am in fact putting off studying for my cs final while writing this). i’ve been attacked by back-to-back sickness. my diet and sleep schedule have been trash. everyone’s cuffed. my hair has been so dry and damaged. i’ve been periodically suffering from immobilizing back pain at the ripe age of nineteen. i’ve been actually dropping bands left and right and am too scared to check my bank account. i didn’t get an internship for which i thought i aced the interview. i didn’t get a student club position for which i thought i hadn’t aced the interview—but still.

i could go on and on. the point is: i’m currently in my flop era. a flop era, if you will—there have been (and most definitely will be) many more to come. there’s just such a lack of motivation and sense of despondency infiltrating every corner of my life right now; it’s like i’ve given up on everything because it feels like i’m doing nothing productive and—worse—can’t muster up enough energy to even try.

of course, these difficult periods are natural parts of life, and i’ve learned that flop eras will come and go. i will eventually surpass this flop era as i have with every previous one i’ve unfortunately found myself in—but how do i make it easier to get through it to make it to that end of the tunnel? and how can you stay sane while experiencing your own mental ruts as well?

an important step for me personally has been learning to accept it. flop eras are normal parts of the cycle of life; sometimes, you just need to feel that sense of ugh. there will always be times when your responsibilities just get too heavy, and you just don’t have the energy needed to continuously keep things afloat like you’ve been doing for so long, and everything is just too much—so give yourself grace to stop and sit in this pit for a bit instead of immediately trying to climb out and exhausting yourself even more.

besides, once you’re in a flop era, it can only go up from here! after all, in my experience, any sense of achievement or success can only feel meaningfully-earned and appreciated after a period of turmoil, of true hard work and despondency, or else—is that success really success?

a seemingly trivial thing that helps me physically and mentally operate a little better on a day-to-day basis is making sure that i put in effort to get ready everyday. confidence in my appearance for me plays a big part in my mood, and just getting ready everyday—taking care of my hygiene, wearing a nice outfit, doing my hair when i can, putting on a bit of perfume—does wonders for my frame of mind. when i feel put together externally, that feeling automatically contributes to feeling better internally, and i think this is a widespread phenomenon that extends to a general population outside of just myself.

in a broader vein, i’m also lucky enough to say that it’s fairly easy for me to be optimistic. when flopping, i capitalize on this trait and tend to cast my mind back to the past, reflecting back on past periods of my life where i similarly found myself in a rut, dealing with stressful issues or a lack of motivation that contributed to an overall past flop era. then, after i take this look back, i always realize that any problem at any point in my life that i would stress so much about seems so minute because it’s always resolved itself at the end of the day. things will get better, because things have always gotten better! after all, i’m only where i’m at currently because i’ve been able to resiliently face and get through all those past flop eras, so logically, i know i can get by this one too.

i’ve learned that i can’t expect things in my life to always thrive or for myself to feel at 100% constantly. it’s easy to look around and think that everyone’s doing better than you, especially during difficult periods in your own life, but comparison really is the thief of joy—in this case, i believe flop eras are a necessary part of life and that it’s time you can take to rethink and reevaluate instead of berating yourself to immediately climb out of that pit. after all, you can’t reach the highs without the lows!

so if i’m making it through my flop era, you can too.