Watching a Horse Running Down its Last Legs

I hinted at something yesterday I've been meaning to post about. I'm exhausted.

My body just decided to take itself off-line for a couple of weeks after the APA. I tend to get sick more when I'm stressed and sleeping less than when I'm feeling good and getting lots of sleep. No surprises there, it's pretty common. The cold hit me a week before the APA, but I beat it back with a battery of expensive herbal quackery, so I was okay at the conference itself. But about 18 hours after I got back from Baltimore, I dropped like a rat in plague times. For the next two weeks, I couldn't walk up stairs without losing my breath, and running for the bus made me feel like I was going to fucking die.

But physical exhaustion's not even half of it. There's the other kind of tired, the one that comes from working with a singular focus on one thing for months, and then seeing your work produce exactly nothing. It's the kind of tired that eats through your motivation and leaves a gaping, empty hole in its place. It's the kind of tired where you can sleep nine or ten hours a night and still wake up just as tired as when you put your head down the night before.

That's a hard tired to shake.