I’ll note, before I go any further, that this was written in advance of you reading it; a full three weeks in advance, in fact, for those who might think this is a reasonable reflection of how I’m feeling right now as it exists for you. (I mean, it might still be, considering. But we’ll see.)
I am tired.
Not sleepy-tired, as we’ve taken to calling it; not the sense of, “if I sit down for too long, my body is just going to slump back and suddenly, it’ll be hours later and someone will point out that I was snoring, and the dog will be upset at the noises coming out of my mouth.” That’s not the problem; if anything, I’ve actually been sleeping relatively well recently, getting consistent, not-waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night sleep, and my body is pretty well-rested.
No, I’m brain-tired. I’ve been thinking too much, or too often, as ridiculous as that sounds. I know, objectively and reasonably, that we’re all thinking all the time, that that’s simply how brains work; I understand that on a practical and realistic level. Nonetheless, I have a sincere and repeated belief that there are times when I think too much, traditionally around work.
It’s the nature of my job; there are times when I have to write a number of articles around 1000 words per day, each requiring a coherent train of thought or argument to be presented, each requiring some level of research or external input. This is my job, and I’m certainly not complaining about it; I do it well, and I love doing it. There’s honestly not another job I think I’d rather be doing. It’s just that, sometimes, I feel especially tired afterwards.
I joke, at times like these, that I’ve had to pull my brain across the finish line as if it’s some grand sport, or as if my brain is a muscle that’s simply been overworked. A poor metaphor, perhaps, but my brain is tired, so what do you want? As I write this, it’s been a long week of a lot of writing, a lot of research and joining the dots and speculation and presentation, and I find myself craving little more than to just… switch off for awhile. To sit down, and to stop thinking thinking for a brief period.
But there are still deadlines to be met, still other stories to write, other interviews to conduct. And so, I write something here, to vent — the irony, more writing — and then pull myself together, to go off and keep doing what I do so well.