Undergraduate senioritis is so much worse than high school senioritis.
I’ve been carrying around a can of Red Bull for four weeks. But I haven’t yet found circumstances dire enough to willfully consume this failsafe. I feel like whatever I need to be able to pull through the remainder of this semester, caffeine and taurine’s not going to cut it.
I have been drinking a lot of coffee, though. But more as comfort food.
I’m not so much sleep deprived as utterly and completely burnt out. At this point, I think I’m too far gone for any stimulant, direct or indirect, to be able to remedy that.
It’s time to get psychological, I think.
When I think of doing homework, my insides shrivel up and it feels like every bit of life housed in every one of my body’s cells is opposed to the concept of fulfilling my academic duties. But it’s just homework! What’s the big deal? Learning is good. I like learning.
But this semester’s been hard, and these days, I really can’t be bothered to care enough.
The scary thing is, I felt the burnout last semester, but my reluctance to devote time to academics stemmed mostly from an acute need to further my creative pursuits. This semester, I still have the need, but the motivation to do anything is declining fast.
Bedtime is my favorite time now. That has never been the case up until this point. Two weeks ago, I legitimately woke up in the morning and thought, disillusioned, that I would have to go the entire day before I could crawl back into bed again. Which was quite unnerving to me.
I don’t want to do homework, but I find myself not wanting to do anything else either. Not writing, or drawing, just nothing. That and the very definition of my existence does not compute. What happened to “I’ll sleep when I’m dead?” What happened to actively pursuing coffee dates with friends? What happened to spending time outside or making time for people? Playing video games and practicing backflips when the weather’s nice or drawing cartoons until the sun comes up?
Gradually, I see the world of “boring adults” in a different light.
Prolonged stress. This is what it does to us.
If I could use a color to describe myself right now, gray is the color I would name. Without hesitation, without deliberation.
Gray.The color of stress, of fatigue, of burnout.
I find myself wasting a lot of time, sitting still for hours on end doing nothing of consequence, never fully fixing my mind on anything for a particular span of time. I think I need to keep better tabs on myself. Not create a meticulous schedule for myself per se, but make sure I’m engaged or that I’ve deliberately disengaged instead of dismally floated off into a stupor, or cycled through social medias three times in a 10 minute span.
I feel like my current way of doing things is slowly killing me. If I’m avoiding something, I should deliberately avoid it and do something that will keep my mind off it and recharge my courage a bit instead of letting the looming obligation constantly suck energy out of me. When I decide to work on it, I’ll work on it.
But I do wonder if I have the energy to do this. To simply not sometimes, instead of fill the fatigue with noise.
Perhaps I can pull it off.
I know this state is temporary, because I’m peace-ing out in three weeks and moving on to new things.
Until then, the remainder of this semester stretches before me like endless nails on a chalkboard. But perhaps I can find gratification in work completed instead of endless distraction.
I want to be excited and optimistic, make the most of the countdown.
But I’m not making much out of anything right now. Only making myself sad.
And I’m not usually willing to accept things as is, so I think there has to be a way to fix that.
Still, if all else fails, I’ll be free in three weeks.
Odonata 