That moment when you find yourself with so much to do, and so little time, not to mention mental energy, that you are sitting in front of the bookshelf indulging in a little light research instead of doing anything else. Even the research is kinda useless, because there’s no writing brain. The writing brain has gone wherever my egg rack for the InstantPot has wandered off to.
It’s not just the move. It’s not just the radical shift in sleeping schedule. It’s not just a new job with all the learning. It’s not just the feeling unmoored while I’m separated by a thousand miles from my First Reader. It’s not just the clinging insecure teenager who needs commuted to his first job (part of the time). It’s not just the constant rain that prevents me from any outdoors time. It’s not just the small living quarters that don’t feel like home, or the balcony garden and no dirt to ground me. It’s not just that.
I keep telling myself, and friends keep telling me, to just be patient. I am not a patient woman. I want to be back on an even keel, and I know, I did this to myself. I don’t like being out of control. I like all my processes to be in control. Huff.
On the other hand, there are some wonderful things about this move that make me happy. I’m close enough to friends to be able to see them in person. I can get lunch with a friend. I can head up to a Memorial Day cook-in (out was far too rainy for that), I can meet a friend at a bookstore. I’m in a new biome and if it ever stops raining, I can explore. I am close enough to meet up with my daughters for a picnic. Yes, I am an introvert, but I think all of us learned in 2020 just how much isolation can affect any of us. I was already hurting from isolation, and researching the affects, before 2020. It’s not just a mental health thing. It has very real and measurable physiological affects as well, on the brain. Prolonged isolation in humans leads to profound declines in cognition and mental elasticity.
It will all shake out in time. In the meantime? It’s too much, and I’m going to occasionally retreat into a book for a while.
Comments
6 responses to “Too Much”
Lord, give me patience. RIGHT NOW! 😈
Laughing! Yes! It will work out in the end. I’m hoping to come back in a year, reread this, and laugh again.
Lord, give me the energy to write, but not now. Tomorrow will do fine.
The writing brain has gone wherever my egg rack for the InstantPot has wandered off to.
Oh, gads.
*hugs*
My brain shut down about…. April, I think, of last year.
For writing.
I had more time and EVERYTHING than ever to write…and I couldn’t.
While you were churning out that delightful Orc.
My husband finally managed to coax it back to life with RP and then “why don’t you write up our RP chat” and then “hey, this is could, could you try writing….?” stuff, about… November? Ish?
Yes, it totally freaking sucks.
No, you’re not dead, you’re not gone.
You’re burnt out.
Feed the fire.
I’ve had a few minor burn outs since then– like a week or two– but BECAUSE of the Mad Genius club, I knew that can happen, so I kept feeding the fire, and then it roars back. OK, sometimes it’s a very tiny roar, and even my big roar isn’t much, but relatively speaking!
I had a very similar situation last year. I’d started doing great, even while we were dealing with home repairs (which meant contractors coming and going, often on little or no notice, and my office having to be packed up and cleaned out), but when the shutdowns started, I just couldn’t. I ended up creating a blog on a spare domain name I’d bought and writing the story of a pandemic in the Grissom timeline, as seen from Shepardsport and covered by Shepardsport Pirate Radio. I called it an Experiment in Storytelling, because I was completely winging it. But it was something, and along with the various writing challenges I participated in, it kept me writing through those dark days.
Seems like this might amuse:
The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours–on the wall–
Are drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!”
The strangest whim has seized me…. After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
To-morrow is the time I get my pay–
My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall–
I see a little cloud all pink and grey–
Perhaps the rector’s mother will not call–
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way–
I never read the works of Juvenal–
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational–
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small–
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
GK Chesterton, “A Ballade of Suicide”