Do you know this feeling when your head is about to explode?

Welcome to my life—I am an infoholic.

Last night, I was trying to write this article about being a infoholic. I say trying because it was rough.

After gathering all the information needed, I had a hard time finding words, and simply felt overwhelmed. The result was an article that nobody really wanted to read and a lot of time spent.

When I saw the article kind of failing to connect with readers, it hit me like a train. Please don’t laugh about me, but I was crying. My head felt as if it was about to explode.

So, I sat with my discomfort. I tried to feel my pain. I asked myself, “What makes you so sad?”

And then I realized it wasn’t about my article that didn’t do well; it was about so much more.

It was a feeling of trying hard but not succeeding. My heart was hurting because I was wondering if anyone even cares what I have to say. And then I realized it wasn’t about that either.

I tried to explain to myself that I am lucky to have a job—I am lucky to be able to share my voice on a daily basis. But why am I still so sad?

I asked myself, “What am I doing with my life?” And how did the other part of me who drinks 10 cups of coffee a day and doesn’t take care of his body take over again?

All my life, I had been jumping from one extreme to the other. When I studied history, I wasn’t able to talk about anything else. Then I became involved in computer science because I couldn’t handle the stress of arguing about history every day—and started talking about spirituality all day.

It was already 2 a.m.—my first thought was, “Oh no, I have to get up again in a few hours. Let’s quickly check Twitter, see what I will write about tomorrow, and go to bed.”

And then I started laughing about myself. If someone were watching me from the outside, it would be easy to observe that I have a problem—I am an infoholic.

When the pandemic started, I read the news 24/7.

Information of all sorts became an addiction that would numb the pain of my own being. There is always something worse going on in the world, distracting from my own problems.

My dog needs to go to the vet, and I have to file my taxes, take care of health insurance, clean my living space, nurture friendships, and so much more that I put to the side. But there is always something happening somewhere that occupies my mind.

Gathering information about the state of the world is important, but as with everything, too much is not good for anyone.

I am slowly learning that I can’t pour from an empty cup and have to take better care of myself. Otherwise, I am not even able to process all the information hitting me. If I were a computer, my hard drive would need a cleanse—it’s full, and there is no external drive to store all the data.

But what to do now?

I decided to do some fasting. Not in the sense of not eating, but in the sense of not consuming information every minute of my life. It is time to slow down, and it is time to find balance.

Nobody (including myself) benefits from me being a ball of anxiety. I need to rest. I need to digest everything that happened throughout the last 15 months—and I am sure that I am not alone with this feeling.

And most importantly: I can’t do it on my own.

I long for human connection. I want to talk to real people and not argue with strangers in comment sections. I would like to hear how my friends feel. There needs to be a change in my life.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t care for history anymore; it’s a learning process on how to find the balance between making sense of it all and just accepting that I can’t know it all.

The pandemic pushed me back into old patterns I thought I had escaped with the help of my yoga practice—it’s time to get back to that practice.

It’s time to find the balance between the little boy who lives inside my heart, the yoga teacher—and the author I would like to be.

But most importantly, it is time to make space for emptiness and stillness—and change the structure from within, as the wonderful article I mentioned at the beginning of this rant suggests.

It’s not about giving up on a dream; it’s about learning how to find balance. It’s not about not trying anymore; it’s about trying in a different way—a more healthy way.

Let’s see what happens.