routine thoughts (sep 15, 2024)

Location: Socotra Coffee, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Temperature: 85 degrees Fahrenheit even though it's mid-September

Health: Better than earlier this year, but worse than when I was back in the Bay

I haven't journaled quite some time. I've been busy traveling, writing, going to conferences, going to weddings, trying just to stay afloat. This week has been particularly tough on my body for some reason – I spent the last two days virtually in bed at all times, feeling incredible fatigued and unable to concentrate on anything. (This includes playing games or watching shows.) This is a continuation of a general fatigue that I've been feeling whenever I'm in Ann Arbor (and yes, it's made itself very clear as fatigue and not malaise more generally).

My anecdotal evidence is that I've travelled quite a bit this year, surprisingly, and I've been not just back in the Bay, but to Brazil for the first time, back to Chicago, back to New York, etc. And even if I'm tired when I'm in these other places, it's different from this fatigue that I feel here in Ann Arbor. It's like this feeling of being drained, being energy-less, like there's an eternal hunger or exhaustion that more sleep doesn't help with. The air feels less filling, if that makes sense.

There are likely quite a few reasons for this. Different allergens in Ann Arbor (which is famous for how bad its almost-year-round allergy season is), stress from being in proximity to my school/program, less excitement compared to when there are tons of things to do at conferences, so forth. These things all feel true, but their amalgamation (and maybe addition of other elements I've failed to consider) make me feel like I'm a zombie, or constantly fighting an invisible tide just to get up, just to think, just to write.

I have my candidacy defense set on October 11 (our program calls it the 'pre-lim' somewhat in line with 'preliminary exams' except it's not an exam, and a part of it is even more like a dissertation prospectus). I need to finish my paper in the next few days to give enough time for responses and revisions, but I'm still stuck on trying to get all my thoughts together and on the page. I had a nightmare today that I missed the deadline and everything in my life fell apart (which is wildly hyperbolic and improbable), but it just goes to show how stressed I am about finishing it in time. I've been trying to "lock in" but still, nothing gets done. So I told myself, maybe I'll just at least write today. Get something on the page, get some momentum going. And as I'm writing this, it doesn't feel too terrible. But I can feel that exhaustion, that fatigue creeping back in. My body is tired even from writing this short of a blog post. I have so many thoughts beyond my health and my immediate circumstances (especially regarding social media, the world, some media I've recently consumed), but I don't have the energy to write about them, even though I feel like I'm excited to talk about them. That's likely what's the most frustrating about all of this. It's not that I don't want to write, it's that it feels like I'm too exhausted to write. I want to finish this defense paper, and in some ways I'm curious where it will lead, but I feel my body physically saying, "No."

I hate this feeling.