Stuck

I'm feeling stuck.

Stuck in life. The sense that there is no real forward motion on any front in my life, nor that there is any retrograde motion as well. The sense that goals lead nowhere, hope is just another word for fantasy, and that trying anything outside of the narrow circumscribed limit that is my life simply doesn't matter.

I've no real idea where this has come from, although it seems to have surfaced about 2-3 weeks ago. I wish I could point to some signal event, something which would say "Hey, this is what started it" - but I can't.

What I do know is that every week, my life feels like it is getting pulled in tighter and tighter circles, like being sucked into a Maelstrom from which there is no escape. Time, once abundant, suddenly seems constrained beyond belief (see yesterday's post here). I suddenly seem to be at a dearth of projects - not that I don't have enough to do that I am interested in, but rather that new projects seem beyond my reach and old projects suddenly seem as if they lead nowhere.

There's a concept. Leading nowhere. That feels right enough as a description for my life right now, sort of stuck in traffic on the highway of life moving about 2 miles per hour in the far left lane, never able to move to the right and get to an off ramp.

I hate this feeling. I really do. It's as if I could close my eyes, go about my daily routine and suddenly wake up realizing it's 20 years later.

So here's the question: if I'm in a rut, and a rut is really a grave with both ends kicked out, how do I get out of it? Or (using a different metaphor) I'm mired in mud, how do I remove myself from the mire?

I wish I knew. All I do know is that this almost feels like a living death: inhabiting a body, moving around daily, yet scarcely living life.