There's been a lot racking my brain lately, as I can tell by how little I've gotten done this week. I've been sick all week, but I've been sick and worked through it without much of a fight. This week has been a lot of lazing around, knowing I have work to finish, but not even so much as starting on it, and Redditing instead.
Maybe this is what depression is like. Not sadness, not specifically anything, but more like...well, Russian has a word for it.
Toska.
"At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." -Vladimir Nabokov
I particularly identify with "dull ache of the soul," "vague restlessness," and "ennui, boredom."
There haven't been that many times I've felt like this in the past two years. It's never been hard to summon some sort of motivation, and when I can't, it's usually a product of distraction. This is not that.
I could blame it on being sick, but I've been sicker. I feel like I'm in purgatory for a sin I haven't committed yet or something. I've used every trick I have for motivating myself -- taking home a handful of new notepads from the office, making lists of specific tasks so I can cross them off, editing photos I've taken, looking at BatonRougeRocks.com, reorganizing drop box folders for the magazine, and even my last resort (cooking). Nothing's making me give more than an ankle-deep fuck.
The only thing I can narrow down as the root of this apathy is the looming deadline for the Country Roads fiction contest, and the fact that I wrote a poem I like the other day. Maybe I'm no longer stimulated by chasing musicians, keeping suicide hours, and taking the pulse of Baton Rouge's nightlife every hour. Maybe it's gotten to the point where my brain agrees with my body that there are more important things I could be spending all this energy on. Maybe I'm ready to stop being the go-to girl; maybe I'm sick of being woman of the year.
I've been angry and ready to quit many times. Now, I'm not even angry. I simply don't care anymore, and I'm worried that nothing is going to make me care before they find someone to replace me.
I'm ready to get this situation with my heart all scrubbed clean -- it's carbonized from being on the backburner for so long. I'm ready to clean the whole kitchen, and get back to the peace I used to know. I still want to write, but I don't want a magazine hinging on me anymore. I'm 26 and I've got a life to live, and still so many souls to meet and document and grow from. I've got it all right in front of me, and I want to take it at my own pace.
The finish line is so close. Just a few more months. They all know already, by accident, so I just have to send the letter. I've got some proteges to pick from, and a manual to write.
Let's go.
