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April 11, 2008
Pleading Mental Exhaustion
Good grief. Why has it taken me this long to identify the symptoms?
I have an extended period of gogogogogo. And then I spend several days doing the bare minimum, with my "free" time all about escapism and not thinking. Even though there are all kinds of things I should be doing with that time, I can't motivate myself to do anything. But even as I do nothing, to rest the tired brain, I am wracked with guilt about the fact that I still have so much to do and I'm not doing any of it. (Which is, of course, an excellent way to motivate myself, reinforcing the mental image of me as a useless, lazy lump. Highly effective. If increasing my lumpness is the goal, anyway.)
Pre-internet, I would read during these down periods. Lots. Lots and lots and lots. I'd go through five or six books in a week, along with doing all of the stuff I was supposed to be doing. Now, I read the blogs I follow and then surf their blogrolls. Probably because I am finding memoir to be more interesting than fiction right now. And because I am lonely and want human contact, even if it's via pixels.
So anyway, here I am again. I've done a lot in the last several weeks, not to mention the past few months. A. Lot. I've had to be the rock in other people's rivers, to stand solid like the banks and let them be all fluid and rush-y because they had issues that needed addressing and I really didn't. So I could let it be all about them. That's beginning to wind down now, things are getting resolved. Gradually. But you combine the emotional upheaval of other people's crises with the very hard work of launching a full production in three weeks and a full time teaching load and, well, I wonder why I just want to sit and stare at things. And I mean to the extent of not even wanting to get up off the couch to make myself some dinner.
What I need is a vacation. A full-on go somewhere else where the entire point of being there is to hang out and not do anything vacation. Because I'm wiped, and it's affecting my attitude. I think if I even had three days off I would be able to manage. Just. Three. Days. where I don't have to be responsible for or to anyone. But I don't have that. Because there's a backlog of grading that must be done, all the grading that didn't get done while I was working on Woods of Weaver. I could have done a bunch of it last night, but I didn't. I just couldn't face it. And today, there will be more added to my pile. So I'll need to spend the weekend grading and learning lines for my next project (which I'm actually happy about working on, it's just a matter of making myself pick the script up), and that's not taking time off. I am so glad, so very very glad I have opted to co-teach two classes next year and call it good, because my currrent schedule is killing me.
Posted by sally at April 11, 2008 09:12 AM
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