I wanted to say that the best insights come to me at times of despair, but I realized those are times when I WANT to feel despair, not when I actually feel it.
I want to feel despair or helplessness sometimes because it absolves me from the hard work I want to do. It has become a habit by now - I set myself up for a bunch of work, all of it is good work, work that is important to me, and then I decide it’s too much work and I should balance it out, and/or that being productive is stupid and we aren’t meant to work like robots - but I come around because I know that work is something I choose to do.
I won’t be able to do everything immediately, but between that and deciding I “just can’t” is a big distance that can only be covered by my choice to feel that.
Some call it self-pity, I call it self-induced despair. This is hard, I’m lost, and there’s nothing I can do about it - only that I very much can.