End of the semester Burnout has got me in its grasp: How do I deal with it?
I know what you’re thinking: Is she CRAZY?! Especially at the sight of someone like me taking a walk in 40-degree weather WITH a cold, wearing crimson red gloves like Del Toro’s Frankenstein (great movie by the way, just got to look away at some of the gore that’s also not in the book, otherwise the closest adaptation to the actual book I’ve seen). How strange, how she looks like such a delicate creature!
“Well, the sun is warm, and it’s not snowing or raining.” I’d say if anyone cared to ask how I’m doing. I’d swing away my curls, driven to madness through contact with my knit hat proudly displaying the colors of the bisexual flag. And I’d smile… might people think I’m crazy? Sure! Maybe I always have been!
What else can I do? It’s because my mental health has been on a total decline. Winter weather hit, and the ever-growing threat of finals is looming over my head, growing closer and closer to crushing me.
So, yeah, I’ll take a moment for myself. Yeah, you could call it procrastination, or the result of doing assignment after assignment without a chance to go home and unwind. I’m so burnt out that the free time that I would spend doing the things I love is spent wasting away watching YouTube, gaming streams, random fandom-based videos, and art videos, wishing I were motivated to game or do art or tell a story. All because I have been bled dry of inspiration for drawings, crafts, or fun short stories, or additions to my novel.
Halloween decals on my dorm door lay untouched, too cold to walk to Walmart and get holiday ones, no energy left over to make cut-out snowflakes and color the funny little sweaters I want to decorate with as a gallery of ugly winter sweaters on my door. Maybe it’s laziness? No motivation to do projects, unclear instructions; I just want to lie down and recover.
Why can’t I go for two weeks without getting a cold? A vicious cycle of getting sick but having to work through it without a chance to recover. Getting better for an instant, then getting knocked down again. Exhaustion is just seeping into everything these days. My body is tired and sick, and therefore weak. Yet I still keep going because I have to. That is the way things go.
So yeah, I’m going to sit down in my little spot along the trail. I’m going to watch the river’s lazy water rolling along, I’m going to listen to the crows bicker with one another, because this is where I can feel free and take a deep breath. This is the best place for me to get ideas and to let my imagination flow whenever I have the chance. This is where poetry begins, and short stories are planned. This is where I get a chance to breathe.