11:03 AM: I feel as though I am drowning in a sea of existential fatigue and self-inflicted overwhelm. Except that “sea” is the wrong body of water for the analogy. It feels as if it should be escapable. That my drowning in entirely a volitional act. But to say that I am drowning in a kiddie pool of anything sounds absurd. And it is.
Today I woke up at 10 am without an alarm, having slept a little over eight hours. I am already tired. I felt fine until I began to think about the day. I live in a state of perpetual unease with a stomach and chest that are forever tight and restless. I am wound tight, always concerned that a delay in any activity, including but not limited to a bowel movement, will fuck up the whole works.
I am not sure if I am working too many hours or if my scheduling and execution of the hours is simply ill managed. I haven’t really left myself much time to figure it out. In any event, my response to this concern was to pick up another 20 – 40 hours a week at a facility to cover a maternity leave.
So, for the next few weeks my goal will simply be to survive and spend as little money as possible. And to contemplate balance if I leave myself the time to do so, which I probably will not.
The first week of the second month of this year is gone and I have yet to even finish reading my journal for the previous year. The purpose of the activity was to capitalize on the reflexive emotional response to an arbitrary time marker and gain some momentum. New year, a more mindful and deliberate me, who refuses to piss the only non-renewable resource I have down the fucking drain, while explicitly refusing to be the victim, and implicitly victimizing myself by enslaving myself to my impulses and emotional turbulence.
Perhaps a change in perspective is sufficient. For the duration of my maternity leave inundation, I will focus on a specific, terminal goal, rather than feel as if I’ve capitulated to a perpetual pursuit of money. Perhaps what I am really drowning in is the sense of endless struggle, rather than the struggle itself. Or perhaps I am merely rationalizing a way to work myself into an early grave, for yet to be known motivations to do so.
