Last month, I cancelled everything. Dropped out of two potlucks and a social hang, turned down two film projects for June and July and a birthday meetup with my childhood best friend, postponed trips to visit family and a dear new baby, and silently let go of all the other “maybes” I’d saved to my calendar. If you’re reading this and you know me, I probably cancelled on you. I’m so sorry. I care about you.
It’s some combination of life events and opportunistic microbes - right now my theory is a post-break up Epstein-Barr Virus flare partying with an inflammatory response to one of my anti-fungal herbs. This stuff happens. I am revisiting the world through the familiar veil of fatigue.
I am working on a piece called Twenty Words for Tired in which I delight in the all the colorful variations and personalities of exhaustion. But today I want to write briefly about one special kind of tired. In a season of commencements and plantings, this particular Tired has a perspective I haven’t seen publicized lately. Yesterday I read Suleika Jaouad’s and Marina Keegan’s writings in Endings, Beginnings, & Dwelling in Possibility. Suleika’s series Sunday Prompts are a consistent balm, and this one offers a path toward dreaming of what could be during a time of profound uncertainty and fear. It reminded me that hope is a muscle and a direction as opposed to a seed that lands in your lap. And it also made me realize that I am not in my season of commencement or even of hope. It will come again, but my present fatigue has a different perspective to share.
It says, Enough. I have done enough. I am pleased with what I’ve done. It has taken everything I have to do the things I have done. Some of them are remarkable - like choreographing short films, and most are unremarkable, like scheduling chimney sweeps (one of my excellent day jobs). I have done a lot and I don’t really have anymore to give.
If I tried to put into words the things this fatigue craves, it’s something like 3 months of hibernation under layers of weighted blankets deep underground, hot salt baths and boxing glove massages, some kind of brothy, meaty, brassical liquid diet, and a weekly letter from a friend saying simply “we haven’t forgotten about you.” That is my fantasy. But the reality is that there is so much to do. Aspirations yes, sustenance, money, and the current sociopolitical horrors. My gosh there’s a lot to do.
But my hands shake after 2pm because they are fatigued from the silly daily tasks. And also from the effort of acting like it’s just a regular day. I deeply want to participate in life again with passion and clarity and two big listening ears. But right now my Tired is in charge. And it’s giving me a gift.
Against my nature and habit, I am finding that I am satisfied with everything I have done up to this point. I have tried my hardest, and I am so tired that I am happy with it all. This sense of satisfaction is new to me. It could also just be a simple somatic reward for laying down any chance I get. For watching more TV. For choosing the can instead of from scratch.
I see a lot of people struggling with their own kinds of burn-out and fatigue. A lot of people are starting each day from zero and digging deeper into reserves they can’t really spare. It’s one of those human gifts - our ability to do it. But it gets really heavy on the heart and mind, to have your body be in that place over time.
Lately, I am marveling at how I am able to go to work each day and cook and do laundry. I wake up each morning wondering how on earth, and then somehow I do it. That’s a miracle. I am able to see the miracle. And I am sad and very sorry for my body who has to perform miracles every day instead of living its underground salt-bath fantasy. My body is a creature out of my control. Like a child, I can be frustrated that it doesn’t follow the path that I’ve laid out for it, or I can be happy that it’s finding its own way. Am I frustrated with it? YES. Regularly. But it’s so much easier to surrender to the Tired rather than fight it. When I do that, it gives me this other miracle, of being happy with what I’ve done. Of feeling that it is enough.
This is a saying for myself, but it is also for you. I have done enough. And I will still do more. But that doesn’t make it less true that what I have done, and who I am, is enough.
Your wisdom and writing remain superpowers. Thank you for writing this.