This time I really tried. If I believed in God, she would know it too. And when my inner critic asks for evidence, I’m the right combination of angry and tired not to oblige. I don’t care; I answer while falling flat on my bed.

Bad doesn’t mean unwatchable, and thus the asterisk. After three years of writing, I can confidently say that creating the right kind of bad takes effort. It’s like a baking recipe for a puff pastry — you’ve to get it just right. Just ask Netflix; they try and fail once a week, inviting the ire of viewers.

Something good, deep, or meaningful is going to challenge my brain by making me feel things. And in my current state of “stuck,” if there’s anything I’m grateful for, it’s the fog. I’m in between, floating in the haze.

The five weeks of January were like a movie as well. It’s too dull for someone else to watch and drift away, but I lived it. And finally, when I’m up, healthy, and wanting to finish things, just like a laugh track from a 90’s sitcom, the words “So what?” repeatedly play in my head. It doesn’t matter.

Usually, getting started in other areas of my life helps set the productive cogs in motion. I start feeling better about myself, and the lists seem inversely less menacing. Maybe I could do it; I dream in the daylight.

A bad movie tries very hard to stay within the lines. At the same time, it can’t insult my intelligence either, as that will lead to a bad review.

Dialogues can be corny but not too much, give me all the cliches but subvert them a bit. Build the climax, but make it believable, and don’t give me an erratic ending. I think that’s the most important thing — knowing.

The last few days, after a bout of poor mental health followed by impaired physical health, have been a weird mix of unwanted things. First, there’s the fog which takes away both pain and the rare positive feelings. Then when I am most awake, unwanted thoughts take me down in their spiral.

Not caring has helped me accomplish most of the goals I set out this month and keep up with my writing at the minimum level. However, the doubt does creep in, asking if I am imagining everything. If this was a cruel joke.

Then last night, after wrapping up my work at a sluggish pace at 2 a.m. and writhing with unwanted thought traps for another half an hour, I’d had enough. I needed it to end, the agony, the anger — everything, and I wanted to shut off my brain for a few hours before I was adequately tired to sleep.

A bad movie is a perfect length, offering just under two hours of escapism. I’ve been having jinxed bad luck with shows, and when it’s not captivating enough, my fingers wander. They wind up in itchy places. I need a break.

I find everything else exhausting. Mobile games dry out my eyes and start up an ache in my arms, leading to upper shoulder stiffness. And when you’re bad at it, there’s only so much you can play without wanting to throw it across the room. Youtube shorts are painful. They wind me up instead.

I don’t know what it is exactly; probably, it’s a carryover craze from the pre-technology era when you couldn’t pause a movie. The right one behaves like an ideal page-turner; you just have to watch the next frame. No breaks.

Even though I closed my eyes at 5:30 in the morning, I felt weightless for the first time in days. The fog had temporarily lifted and was lying beside me, eating virtual popcorn. I wouldn’t call it a guilty pleasure because even the next day, I feel good that I could do this for myself. I think it’s okay.

Writing is healing and has always been, even before I decided to do it professionally. Typically, about 700 words in, I would feel a sense of euphoria kick in, riding with my flow, like the sweet smell of a bakery.

But today feels like groundhog day. I woke up feeling better and did not succumb to the urge to omit today. I didn’t feel like working, but I managed not to criticize myself for it. I finished my chores, got my affairs in order, and tidied up my lists. All of this is progress, but it makes me feel emptier.

The numbing effect generated from the lack of pain makes me not want anything. When I am down in the dumps, a consistent theme is feeling horrible about everything I’ve ever wanted and not gotten. Now I’m blank.

I feel like I’ve had a headache forever, without a cure. My feelings are blocked just like my sinuses, and my eyes sting from remaining open and fixated. I can’t rest without planning, because I’ll expose myself to anxiety.

Yesterday I escaped for two hours by accident, and I have this lingering feeling that if I plan it tonight, it isn’t going to happen. I won’t be able to find the perfect bad movie, just like I can’t seem to get back to my normal. I’ll wander engulfed by the fog, neither here nor there, just killing time.

All the goals I had envisioned for February seem to be fading. The thing I haven’t attended to in the last few days is myself, and the ones I label “personal tasks” mockingly lie untouched. I simply can’t escape this misery.

I haven’t written what the perfectionist deems to be “good writing” in a fortnight. Even today, when the words flow out of me surprisingly, helping me chuck everything else aside, I don’t know where I’m going with this. Frankly, I’ve forgotten half the ideas I had earlier today. But I don’t care.

At this moment, I find everything to be so pointless that I fancy making a list of bad movies to watch. Maybe that will be my greatest contribution to the world — helping others escape into predictable colorful, fantasy land.

When I got around to completing other things today, my goal wasn’t just to trigger my productivity or feel remotely like an adult. I knew that wouldn’t work. The secret idea was to exhaust myself so much that I could sit down and write what came to mind so fast that my fingers couldn’t keep up.

I figured as long as I am tethered to my doc, unwanted thoughts won’t come, well-thought-out work goals won’t seem funny, and maybe expressing a bit of what I’m going through will help unplug the reservoir.

Alternating between asking myself if I am sleep deprived enough to finish this piece without caring and feeling acute loss about the ideas I had this afternoon, I ask myself if I can make things a bit easier. The answer, this time, unfortunately, is no. If there were a way out, I would have found it.

These in-between phases don’t catch me by surprise anymore. Practice makes better, allowing me to be kinder to myself and in believing that this is a phase, just like the ones before. It’s as predictable as a crashing wave.

In contrast to waves and tides, there is no way for me to calculate intensity, duration, or consequences. It’s midnight, and I’m more reflective now than I was at 5 p.m. Still, I am angry and exhausted. I feel the fog suffocating me, and if I get out, I spiral further out of control. It’s a defective game.

I’ll look for one with IMDB just around six; a cliched opposite attracts romance with a quirky girl without main character energy and the perfect fictional guy who gave us all unrealistic dating expectations. It’ll suffice.