I'm Exhausted and I Cannot Lie

My "go" is broken and I'm freaking out about it, let's talk.

(Here’s a lol. I tried to find a Taylor Swift lyric for the subject line of this email to keep with my yearlong theme of TS-themed newsletters, and lo: nothing about being tired, napping, bone-deep exhaustion! I laughed at my effort because aside from those topics being terrible song material, hello, did I not just see that bitch perform her ass off for THREE AND A HALF HOURS STRAIGHT after doing the same thing the night before in a monsoon? She’s thirty-three. She doesn’t have kids. She’s got endless resources. I had piles of energy at thirty-three, too—even hungover all the time and a new mom. Taylor does not yet know tired. Fine.)

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Last Thursday, I planned to finish my scheduled piece and publish it here—a Q&A piece about social media and how I work with competition and jealousy of other writers. I drove Alma to school, then met up with a friend to jump in the ocean for a cold dip (she’s been trying to get me to go for a few months). The dip was actually awesome; the water was 59 degrees, so not too cold, and I felt all that glorious adrenaline and dopamine afterward. On my way home, I grabbed some breakfast, and by the time I pulled into the driveway twenty minutes later, I felt like a husk of a human, completely drained of all the feel-good-go chemicals that had flooded my body just minutes before. So I changed my clothes, put sweats on, and crawled into bed, assuring myself I’d stay under the covers just long enough to get warm, and then I’d get in the shower and get to work.

I woke up three hours later.