Path And More Path
I don't recall ever being this mentally tired. I'm sure I was at some point in college when school, tennis, work, and anorexia had a stranglehold on my life. I'm pretty sure I blocked it from memory for a reason. I sincerely wish I hadn't or I might have seen this coming.
My life is about doing, being, striving. Now. It wasn't always this way. I spent most of my post-college and post-anorexia years doing absolutely nothing with purpose. I worked; worked a lot, but it rarely meant anything besides a paycheck and a way out of debt. It was fun at times but I seldom thought of it as anything more than a means to an end. 'We all gotta work, right?' sums up my existence in those years. I floated from job to job, city to city, and person to person. Things mattered but it was all more or less bullshit. I take full responsibility.
Then one day something changed. Today, everything has purpose and I'm tired. Every moment of every day is occupied. If it's not work, it's class, or homework or reading or research for a paper due in a month. If it's none of that, it's tennis or watching tennis (before my cable provider stopped carrying Tennis Channel) or the gym or running. Otherwise, it's concern about what I'm eating and shouldn't be, what I'm drinking and shouldn't be, laundry that isn't getting done, chores I've let slip, friends I've let slip, miles I haven't run and blogs I haven't written. And then there's the hair that gets more frustrating by the day. Life is constant and never ending. I feel like canon fodder and I'm tired.
I took Sunday 'off'. By 'off' I mean that I spent the morning writing a paper, the early afternoon running, and the remainder of the afternoon and early evening watching football out of one eye and reading a book on Existentialism out of the other. The book was ' pleasure' reading, meaning 'not required'. Please don't misunderstand. I never have and never will derive any sort of 'pleasure' from reading philosophy. I see it more as an investment in the future - somewhere down the road, it may come in handy. I suppose it's all fun enough (I tell myself it is often), but I'm so mentally exhausted I'm ready to run away to Europe with only a backpack and my favorite old sweatshirt. Under normal conditions, I have absolutely no desire to visit Europe (unless it's for Wimbledon or maybe the French Open). At the moment, it seems responsibility-free and, by virtue of that and that alone, enticing.
Even right now, I'm writing this on my phone while 'watching' tv. I'm exhausted and I still won't stop. There's too much to do and if I stop I fear I may never start up again. 'A body in motion stays in motion'. God, I hope so. Otherwise, I don't have a prayer.
I'm on a path and it's a good path. Contrary to the paragraphs above, I'm in the best place I've been in a long time. Rather than avoiding challenge, I'm facing it head-on. And as scary as it seems sometimes, I'm actually enjoying myself. I wish I would have considered the exhaustion factor, but all that's hindsight. Maybe it's best that I didn't. After all, the exhaustion is part of the challenge. How to think when tired? How to fake normal thought when tired? How to keep going when all you want to do is to do nothing? Of course, as we saw above, 'time off' is never time off. Dammit.
I suppose I could rationalize that all this is simply getting me one step closer to my goal. Ooh... If only I knew what my goal was. Right now the path is all there is for me. Path and more path. Challenge and more challenge. And incidentally, tired and more tired.
My life is about doing, being, striving. Now. It wasn't always this way. I spent most of my post-college and post-anorexia years doing absolutely nothing with purpose. I worked; worked a lot, but it rarely meant anything besides a paycheck and a way out of debt. It was fun at times but I seldom thought of it as anything more than a means to an end. 'We all gotta work, right?' sums up my existence in those years. I floated from job to job, city to city, and person to person. Things mattered but it was all more or less bullshit. I take full responsibility.
Then one day something changed. Today, everything has purpose and I'm tired. Every moment of every day is occupied. If it's not work, it's class, or homework or reading or research for a paper due in a month. If it's none of that, it's tennis or watching tennis (before my cable provider stopped carrying Tennis Channel) or the gym or running. Otherwise, it's concern about what I'm eating and shouldn't be, what I'm drinking and shouldn't be, laundry that isn't getting done, chores I've let slip, friends I've let slip, miles I haven't run and blogs I haven't written. And then there's the hair that gets more frustrating by the day. Life is constant and never ending. I feel like canon fodder and I'm tired.
I took Sunday 'off'. By 'off' I mean that I spent the morning writing a paper, the early afternoon running, and the remainder of the afternoon and early evening watching football out of one eye and reading a book on Existentialism out of the other. The book was ' pleasure' reading, meaning 'not required'. Please don't misunderstand. I never have and never will derive any sort of 'pleasure' from reading philosophy. I see it more as an investment in the future - somewhere down the road, it may come in handy. I suppose it's all fun enough (I tell myself it is often), but I'm so mentally exhausted I'm ready to run away to Europe with only a backpack and my favorite old sweatshirt. Under normal conditions, I have absolutely no desire to visit Europe (unless it's for Wimbledon or maybe the French Open). At the moment, it seems responsibility-free and, by virtue of that and that alone, enticing.
Even right now, I'm writing this on my phone while 'watching' tv. I'm exhausted and I still won't stop. There's too much to do and if I stop I fear I may never start up again. 'A body in motion stays in motion'. God, I hope so. Otherwise, I don't have a prayer.
I'm on a path and it's a good path. Contrary to the paragraphs above, I'm in the best place I've been in a long time. Rather than avoiding challenge, I'm facing it head-on. And as scary as it seems sometimes, I'm actually enjoying myself. I wish I would have considered the exhaustion factor, but all that's hindsight. Maybe it's best that I didn't. After all, the exhaustion is part of the challenge. How to think when tired? How to fake normal thought when tired? How to keep going when all you want to do is to do nothing? Of course, as we saw above, 'time off' is never time off. Dammit.
I suppose I could rationalize that all this is simply getting me one step closer to my goal. Ooh... If only I knew what my goal was. Right now the path is all there is for me. Path and more path. Challenge and more challenge. And incidentally, tired and more tired.
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