Shorts and Snippets

I have started, stopped, restarted, erased, started again, and temporarily given up on about twelve blog posts over the past few months. I’ll get the idea for a post based off life observations, random epiphanies, or stories from my life that hold some kind of personal meaning (all of which stick to the theme of this blog)… and then I just can’t finish them.

Why? It comes down to a lack of time and energy.

And there are some good posts in the making, if that counts for anything. Just a few that I’m really trying to finish are “Fair,” which is about the realities of adulting, namely spending all earned money on bills; “Punishment by Kisses,” which is about my discipline tactic for Theon, our absolutely insane kitten-almost-grown-cat, and “The Weirdest Thing I’ve Ever Wanted,” which is about…well, I’ll get around to writing about that level of crazy soon.

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway – that I’ll get around to writing down all my ideas eventually.

And I’ll also get around to vacuuming my apartment, and scrubbing my showers, and deep-cleaning my car, and maybe trying out a new recipe, and actually reading all the pages in my textbooks, and answering all the texts I get when I receive them and not putting off replying for two days, and meeting up for dinner or coffee with my friends to assure them I’m still alive, and going through my closet to throw out things I never wear and and and –

Honestly, I think that the reasons prohibiting a steady stream of posts on this blog can describe my life right now.

No time.

No energy.

Only work and school. And eating occasionally. Though to be fair, I very rarely sacrifice sleep. I go to bed and wake up at the same time most days in order to get my eight hours.

So, okay. Work, school, and sleep.

I’m sitting here at my kitchen table on a Friday night, which is my Sunday because my workweek starts on Saturday. I have laundry in the dryer, dirty dishes in the sink, and about 47 million homework assignments in my head quite literally giving me panic attacks if I think about them too much.

I went to a Carrie Underwood concert last night (which was AMAZING), and the only downside to it was that I didn’t get to bed until 1 in the morning, which is about five hours past my bedtime. And I can’t sleep in to save my life (see above), hence why this whole day has gone by in a haze of exhaustion.

So naturally I’m writing this post rather than doing my homework. After, oh, eight hours of trying to study, I’ve given up. For tonight, anyway. But now more than ever I just want to give up forever.

No time.

No energy.

Even with sleep.

My apartment needs to be cleaned. I haven’t gone grocery shopping in over a week. Gypsy – our six-year-old calico kitty – peed on the couch cushions for two consecutive nights now so the couch is taken apart and the covers are sitting on top of the washer. She has an appointment to see her vet on Sunday since peeing on the couches in the past always meant that she came down with a UTI.

And as I sit and look around I realize that I haven’t had the time or energy to do anything besides work or school since January. Sooner later, I figured, I would start to feel the strain, but that I’d be able to handle it when it came. But after several months of a balancing act… something eventually has to give. I fear that thing is my sanity. Or my health. This past week I’ve just felt awful – nauseous and weak all around. Stress does wonders to the human body.

Where am I going with this post, other than to shamelessly and selfishly complain about first world problems on social media? I have no idea.

I guess all I intended to say is that I knew I would break down eventually.

No time.

No energy.

I am taking a week off (an entire week!) in May, during which I will have no work and no school. At long last, I’m going to Monument Valley for one or two of those days, and my boyfriend will probably tag along. We are both in desperate need of a vacation – or at least a date. This vacation is going to be what gets me through.

Until then, I have a huge work event to help run (which, to be fair, is going to be incredible – details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/521077841398233/) and two classes worth of final papers, assignments, research article summaries, discussion board posts, and textbook analyses due in the next few weeks.

One other blog post I’ve attempted to work on is “Adulting Definitions,” in which I give my own definitions to words or terms. One of my terms is grad school, and it is currently defined as “two years of making bad decisions and justifying them.”

Guys, this is hard.

I thought undergraduate work was difficult. And it was. Undergraduate degrees are brutal.

But it was all just a sample of the daily hell that is grad school. For the first time since I started my program in January, I am truly beginning to question why I started.

Luckily for me, the reason I started is the reason that will keep me going. All 32 reasons will keep me going.

To all of my ranch friends and coworkers reading this….please let this blogpost serve as an explanation as to why I haven’t answered your emails or texts yet or sent donation receipts or planned meetings or completed my part of a group task.

No time, no energy might be the theme of this blogpost, but I know that life is a battle of finding both for the things that are important.

Life, you haven’t won this round yet.

Yet.

 

Tagged: adulting, energy, Life, time, tired