So Tired: Life in 2020

Sometimes when you work too much, you achieve a level of clarity that allows you to step back and take stock of your life and the choices you have made. Other times you just feel exhausted and want to take naps and sleep in every day. Of course, you force yourself to get out of bed and go to work because that is the adult thing to do and you have responsibilities. If you are anything like me, your sense of self-worth that is intricately connected to conscientiousness bordering on insanity. Your Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) leads to the strangest behaviors like getting to work early and taking on extra work to maintain a sensible sense of identity. 

During these odd days of COVID, I find myself doing less work than usual or struggling to maintain my usual level of obsessive-compulsive writing and grading. I have new habits of grading a few papers a day instead of my standard marathon sessions; however, if I do decide to embark on a marathon grading regimen, I have graded for as long as twelve hours at a pop, only resting to eat a sandwich or pay a minute of attention to an episode of some new Golden Age of Television show. I am waiting on editors to give me notes on one article and send me the proofs for another. The interminable waiting has become a fact and way of life under COVID, so I try not to think about these responses, or I will drive myself crazy. 

Instead, I listen to records, slog through my work, and write fiction because I have to write something. I have not been serious about fiction for years, even though I would return to various novels and plug away every few months. I amazingly finished a short story and am well on the way to completing another. I forgot how fun it is to write when you do not have deadlines, and I hope I can remember that feeling when I finally get back to revising articles. I still do not write fiction as much as my stress wants me to, but when I do, I feel much freer than I have before. 

I tell people every day that I have COVID Brain, a phrase that someone should trademark because I am so tired and distracted. I found myself talking about the wrong assignment in class the other day and quickly switched to the right one. My writing students probably do not want to hear about Tom Ripley, I thought when they are busy writing critical reviews. I have been getting enough sleep for the first time in years because I am going to bed when I should and getting at least seven hours instead of the five that I averaged in graduate school. So as much as I complain, there are a few good side effects to COVID Brain because it forces me not to overwork as much as I want to. It does not stop me from missing the days when I scratched pages long laundry lists and felt terrible when I did not finish half the items. For now, I have to live with my COVID Brain and take it easy. I still don't feel like the Dude from The Big Lebowski in the immortal words of The Stranger (Sam Elliott), "Takin' er easy for all us sinners." I feel more like Grumpy Cat glaring at the camera or Allen Ginsberg's narrator in his poem "America," "turning his queer shoulder to the wheel." Here's to sleep and taking long afternoon naps.