the point of diminishing returns

According to “Smokey Stove” on phrase.org.uk, the “point of diminishing returns” is “a supposed point at which additional effort or investment in a given endeavor will not yield correspondingly increasing results."

About a week ago, I reached this point. Actually, I didn’t just reach this point, it morphed into a black hole that has sucked me up and refused to release me for the past six days.

The “given endeavor” is just life in general. My efforts in school, sports, friendships, and relationships feel unrewarded and useless. I’m BURNT OUT.

I credit my black-hole syndrome to a number of different things; senioritis, cold weather, mean girls, dumb boys, and my lack of free time. I’ve allowed my positivity to be squashed by calc homework and 12° weather.

So, what do I do? Like most times when I have a problem (so, like, every day), I go to one of the handful of people I actually trust to give me good advice. The captain and MVP of my “support team” is my mom, and other members include my therapist, my sister, two close friends, and my dad. The group is tiny but mighty.

In asking what to do about my recent bad mood and lack of motivation to do, well, anything, I got similar answers across the board. I think I heard the phrase “Just push through!” a billion and one times.

I don’t want to “push through!”. I want to get an A instead of a C on the calc test I studied my ass off for and I want a triple double in a basketball game after four years of enduring late practices and weekend tournaments.

But apparently, that’s not always how it works. Which sucks.

So, I’m going to work on the only thing I can control; myself. I can’t control the results of my efforts, but I can control my efforts themselves. Just because I’m not “rewarded” in the typical way one would expect to be when putting work and time into something, I do always end up learning something.

In being a mediocre basketball player (at best), I’ve learned what it means to embrace my role on a team and how it’s okay that my role looks different from others. In wasting time on relationships that ended in a dumpster-fire of pissed-off-ness and nights spent listening to “sad girl” music in my car for two hours, I’ve learned that not everybody deserves to know me like that. In spending hours on math assignments that are utterly useless for someone who wants to major in English in college, I’ve learned how to persevere.

Just because I didn’t get what I wanted out of doing all of these things, I still got something out of them. I’ve heard that the lessons I’m learning will end up being more important than the results anyways (I’ll believe it when I see it).

So yes, I will “push through!”, (though not always with a smile on my face or even a positive attitude). My goal is purely to keep the idea that things will work out in the back of my head when I consider quitting trying. Hopefully that will keep me going for the next 107 days, 3 hours, and 11 minutes until graduation (not that I’m counting or anything).