I have hit the bottom of the pool.
I was in class last Tuesday night when we were
treated to a guest lecture by Ally Isom, who impressed me solidly after I
misjudged her dismissively. There were a lot of things she said that
brought hope to my heart, though they were mostly regarding the women's
initiative she was hired to coalesce throughout church headquarters, and that's
not a topic I'm organized enough to address responsibly. The one thing
she did say that struck me hard was "when people get enough sleep they are
brilliant." I've been hitting major writer's block walls with my
thesis lately. Nothing I write flows well even through one paragraph, let
alone into the next. My brain is skittish and cannot stay on one track
very smoothly. And you know what? I haven't managed to string two
decent nights' sleep together in at least the last 6 months. I have consistently
tried to function on around 5 hours of sleep since I started school last year.
It's official. It has caught up with me.
I'm functioning on about 10% in lots of ways.
I've failed to keep the people I've met in our new neighborhood and ward
straight. I often have a hard time distinguishing between important
points and minutia. Lunchtime and dinnertime sneak up on me every day.
I'm just not a very good version of myself.
At this point I wonder whether it'd be worth it to
devote a large block of time to addressing my sleep problem at the expense of
school time, in hopes that I'd make up for the lack of time with increased
productivity. I'm having half a moment of sympathy with Katharine
Hepburn's brand of atheism when she'd say "Don't tell me there's an
afterlife. I just want to rest when I die. Just sleep and do
nothing forever." [1]
All things in moderation though... I'd get sick of just sleeping much
faster than I've gotten sick of not sleeping enough.
But when I heard Ally say that – it connected a lot of dots inside of my
head. “Oh yeah, that’s why my thesis
writing is going slow as tar.” I’ve
known I was “burnt out” for a while now, but hadn’t gone so far as to say “I
cannot think clearly enough to write well because my brain is starved for sleep….”
Hadn’t occurred to me, because… well… sleep deprivation.
My opportunities for addressing this are not super promising, as I’m
staring down writing deadlines and my comprehensive exams. (Seriously, this Christmas season is going to
be the biggest bummer of my life… my comps aren’t until December 20th,
which leaves me how much time to put my heart into festivities?)
But I’m realizing I have very little choice if I want my thesis to be
anything more than drivel.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCVKfmVvSlg
- and I know I mangled the quote. Also,
don’t worry mom. I’m sympathizing with
the exhaustion sentiment, not the aetheism sentiment.
No comments:
Post a Comment