Is it really possible to avoid that blurred together feeling? I haven't been unblurred for years, and when I was, I now think it was an illusion, like when a soft focus photo appears to be really sharp. Maybe this isn't the kind of post I should be responding to at 4 AM.

Yeah I think the blur is natural so it's about the emotional response to that.. it can be a draining blur or you can have a neutral or good feeling about it. I guess keeping one's nose to the grindstone helps if there's too much space to mull about it in a negative way

I don't have a good feeling about the blur. I have a non-so-neutral feeling that I'm stuck with it so accepting it is all I can do. Along with it is the experience that time has accelerated (it's a motion blur, not a focus blur) but then I think that time moves slowly when everything is new and unique, and rushes past when it's structured and routine and similar events are almost interchangeable and what used to be foreground becomes background and that I need to find my way back to the immediate present.

Something I just figured out that rationalizes around my unease with the blur is that if I've been at this restaurant fifty times before, this dude working here has been around just as long--if I've been in this room watching this TV show before the person hosting it has been at it at least as long--so there's nothing wrong with choppy familiarity in itself. Some people optimize for that kinda stability in fact. Maybe it's also just part of transitioning into full adulthood to understand that what seems like a huge amount of time isn't really that huge an amount of time and that segueing in and out of scenes, things, phases doesn't mean having to figure out what you were doing in the meanwhile; you're doing your thing, that place, community or person is up to theirs, sometimes you intersect and meanwhile you maintain your different continuous existences.

I suppose somewhat of an understanding of the issue is that it's not a 'rut' unless it's coupled with an actual claustrophobic feeling or desire for change and it's not a 'loss' that you weren't involved with it continuously unless you really want to commit to persistently engaging with whatever it is.

Some of this leans into Ecclesiastes territory with the musing about how things hover somewhere between permanence and fleetingness so it's hardly a unique anxiety or one that needs actual resolution I suppose..