I am a limited resource and I don't know what to do about it

I’ve found a new way to be productive and it’s exhausting me.

I’m not sure if it’s more or less exhausting than the potent combination of guilt and anxiety produced by procrastination – probably it’s just a different kind of draining.

Today, after two hours cloistered in a library cubicle, working diligently on a late paper, I got stuck on the stairs to the ground floor. A girl passed me on the landing. She said something , and I couldn’t hear what. I had my headphones on, but with the cord yanked out, so I just heard muffled quiet, and felt pressure. The girl glanced back at me a few times. I remembered how to climb the stairs.

Outside of the library, I stood rocking on my heels, getting cold, blowing out clouds, stimming out on stars. It took me a while to gather the energy to walk to my dorm. I felt I’d hit some kind of wall. I thought, I have come to the end of my brain. In high school I had some arrogant idea that my brain was somehow infinite, and only my time was limited.

The moisture on the ground was turning into frost, creating a sparkling effect that first dazzled and then overwhelmed me.

I’m pretty sure I used the last of my spoons to get to my room, or perhaps the penultimate spoon. I have a backlog of German homework to do, but I can’t do it anymore, so now I’m calculating how early I have to get up this morning, how best to bury and wrap my alarm to keep my sleep-deprived self from simply shutting it off and giving up. I’m at that point where I’m so tired that the steps between me and sleep – taking things off the bed, turning off the light, setting and wrapping the clock – seem insurmountable.

So I’m not sleeping. I’m thinking about thinking, worrying about worrying, writing about writing.

Limitations

I had great plans for this year.

Last semester, I started out on a bad note, feeling stuck and overwhelmed and not getting any of my readings done. This year, I decided I would start out the semester more organized. I would plan better, and overcome my anxiety so that I could be prepared for my classes. Instead of feeling disconnected from the subjects I was studying, I would do all my readings and feel fully engaged. I would emerge knowledgeable and triumphant. It was going to be amazing.

So I started my semester with the goal of preparing for class. And for maybe two glorious weeks, I came to all my classes with all or most of the reading done, knowing exactly what we were going to be talking about and prepared to make insightful comments. Finally, I felt like a good student, a good person.

I did some of this by being more organized and planning better, and this was definitely a good thing. But ultimately, here is where the extra reading time was coming out of:

- down time, relaxing by myself
- social time with friends
- time spent doing laundry and unpacking
- sleep

As a result of this, the wonderful feeling of being a good student came with some unpleasant side effects. I felt unhappy, and sort of purposeless, with so much time spent cramming for class. I got more fatigued, until last Thursday I fell asleep in the middle of a really fascinating lecture. And I felt so mentally tired that I spent most of the weekend lying on my bed listening to an audiobook, panicking about getting my work done but somehow unable to attend to it. Halfway through Saturday I decided that if I wasn’t going to do work, I should at least get up and clean my room. I then continued to lie on my bed, despairing of my ability to do things.

Three weeks into the school year, I successfully burnt myself out.

The lesson learned from this lovely episode is that I can’t do all my reading. I don’t have the time to devote to it, the brainpower to process it all, or the emotional strength to deal a life of academic isolation.

I feel guilty about this – like I’m a bad student, a slacker, a cheater. I’m not the scholar I wanted to be. I also feel sad when I think about what I’m missing. I mean, in one of my history classes we’re studying Nazi Germany, a subject upon which I have spent countless hours perseverating. I want to do this reading, and I’m sad that I can’t.

But at the same time, I feel kind of liberated. I don’t have to walk around haunted by the specter of chapters unread, thinking I’m a failure, convincing myself I really will read those last 50 pages and then falling short. I can admit to myself that I won’t get around to reading those 50 pages, or the introduction to the next history text, or the poem we’ll be looking at in German on Friday. I can go out for dinner with friends, or read blogs, or do my fucking laundry, even if I haven’t done my reading. And I shouldn’t feel guilty about it (though I do). I know that by not finishing my reading, I’m preserving my brain to fight another day.