Exhaustion

Problem sets. Coffee. Having to eat. Lablablablab. Philosophy. Evolution problem sets. Mechanism problem sets. Biochemistry problem sets. Papers. Research Proposals. Viral infection. Maintaing socially appropriate conversations. Waking up. I forgot my staple. Reading. Reading. Reading. Midterm tomorrow, but I haven’t studied. Tutor. Mentor. Tutor. Tutor. Teach. OK Go.

There are days when I’m sad, days when I’m on the top of the world. Days when I’m mad and everyone grinds my gears. Days when I flow, when people are more than sufficient, they build me up, they encourage me. Days when I feel like I fail absolutely. Days when I’m overambitious. Days when my mind can’t get started. Days when my mind refuses to stop, words and ideas flying through like the sound from a radio, the stations constantly being changed. Even if you yell stop, even if you stare at a brick, nothing stops the free flow of noise.

But this week, it’s only a slow slope into exhaustion. Today. Doing school. It’s like clockwork. That’s okay, I like clocks. Part of me keeps saying, this is okay. But it’s not. At some point, I have to rest. I just don’t realistically know when that’s going to be. When I eat meals? The 6 hours of sleep I get every night (if I sleep straight through). It’s like I’ve learned how to jump through all the hoops. I’ve shown it already. But I have to keep jumping. Over and over and over and over and over. I’m exhausted, physically and mentally.

There are times when I embrace this. I know that sometimes I find I’m gutsiest when I’m near the end of a run, or in the middle of a grueling third set. I make points I would never have made totally rested. I find a fifth wind. Its the same mentally. Do you know mental exhaustion? When your brain physically feels overworked, and when you’re not doing something you’re literally blank. No words float through your head. But when you do work, suddenly your thoughts are jutted here, then there, and under platforms and into corners you didn’t know existed in your head. Your consciousness is like a drunk madman, sometimes falling off the platform when you pass out at night, sometimes creating new ideas and shifting paradigms and inventing new worldviews. This sounds amazing, but maybe it’s not. At least it’s rare. The outcome is good, but the process is painful. And it redefines what it means to be rested, to be content–that is, to be boring.

But sometimes, clockwork is okay.

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