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Countdown: 10 days until November 1 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Tired
Yeah, it's ten days BEFORE NaPlWriMo, and I'm already tired.
Today I ended up working a 12 hour day and I will work 3 more eight hour shifts before I am off on Sunday. I have homework, writing, crocheting of a baby blanket for Ruby due in November (not my child, because REALLY, all that would be even more insane), my fiance's job search, and my duties here And a 55 hour work week. I already said that. I'm tired.
Anyway, apologies for the rambling. The point is to not have a contest about who has more to do (like I did with some of my co-workers today), or make people feel bad for doing or not doing things, or to scare anyone off. The point is, I have grown to LOVE my life busy like this.
Ever since I started at a community college in 1996 until I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2005, through working a full time job and working at Comedy Sportz Quad Cities, all while being an improv newbie, through being cast in a play and working the current full time job, up until just about a couple weeks ago, I've been insanely busy. It seems I'm not happy unless I have about 85 things I love to do at a time.
Plus, being tired weirdly makes me feel like I'm alive.
Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones and The Long Quiet Highway, among others, says in The Long Quiet Highway:
"Recently I dorve alone from Minneapolis to New Mexico in late December, the darkest time of the year. I had to cross the souther border of Minnesota, drive straight through Iowa, across Kansas, into Oklahoma and Texas...The half moon and one evening star were directly in front of me. A train roared by on my right. The moment was over and I was tired, puling into a Best Western at ten P.M. in the town of Liberty on the Oklahoma border. What I wanted was to love all of this: my weariness, the wind lifting as I got out of the car at the Texaco....Every moment is enormous, and it is all we have...There is not a short cut from Minneapolis to New Mexico. My car had to cover every mile. We learn with every cell and with time, care, pain, and love....We all must go down that highway. Our life is the path of learning, to wake up before we die... (xii-xiii)."
Tired reminds me that I'm alive, that everything I'm doing, every moment is all I have. And being tired from doing things I love--that's the best.
So don't be afraid of being tired in November, even with a pile a mile high of everything you have in your life, plus writing a play. It will be worth it. I promise.
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Yeah, it's amazing the amount of time we can spend resisting being tired when in fact just being tired is a lot easier.
Thanks for this.
Go Rhino, go !
I was afraid it didn't make sense because I was so dang tired when I wrote it. :)
"I'm not happy unless I have about 85 things I love to do at a time."
I completely understand that. I often joke that I'm not happy with myself unless I've made things as complicated as possible.
You wrote this entry at a perfect time for me. Not only is NaPlWriMo on the horizon, but I just had a horrible stress-breakdown two days ago because of all the work I'm juggling. I'm only working a 35 hour work week, not the insane 55 you're tackling, and it's from home. But in addition to that I have class twice a week (an hour commute each way, despite being only about 5 miles away, because of the lovely MBTA system), work at the theater box office each weekend day/night, and a ton of writing to get done for next week. I have to try to get two polished 10-minute plays ready by next week for the Kennedy Center's college theater festival, and I seem unable to write 10-minutes. I also ideally should expand my one decent 10-minute into a one-act to submit too. And there's a few other festivals with deadlines in the first half of November. AND I have to workshop revisions of the first few scenes of my current full-length on Monday. And strike a set all day Sunday. I'm going out of my mind. :) Your blog made me feel a little better. And this comment was way too long.
You and Dorothy both made me feel better about the entry. I was worried it was too early in the process to mention being tired, but I realize, there's no too early for any of the emotions we feel with NaPlWriMo--we get those emotions all the time!
I have a tendency to get in trouble if I don't have enough to do with my time. I always worked better studying for finals if I had only a couple days to do it, versus the whole week of finals. I work better under a tough time crunch.
I'm not sure I could write a ten minute play again if I tried. It's funny, because I came from a No Shame Theatre background where you couldn't write anything longer than 5 minutes. But once I stopped doing No Shame, I couldn't write something that short. And since I stopped doing the ten minute play festival after I graduated, I can't seem to write a ten minute play. I don't know why, maybe I'm just psyching myself out.
Anyway, this is getting ridiculously long. I just want to say that you are definitely in good company with being ridiculously busy.
Wierdly, this blog about being weary couldn't come at a better time. I've written and am directing a Christmas play that goes up starting December 3rd while getting a production of Godspell into production mode at a college where I'm directing for the first time and begin with it right after my other show opens. The college is high maintence right now not aknowleging I'm IN production for one of my "babies"----a play I wrote and am trying to bring to term so we can birth it. A long way to go yet as a play written and rewritten is written again on it's feet. That and classes to teach and my four year old wanting some of my time as well as my husband. So now I sign up for this as it sounds fun and motivating, but I am tired. Part of the journey put so well by Natalie Goldberg and you. Thank you. I think I'll look around and take it all in and just write. These words couldn't come at a better time.
I am glad you found comfort in this blog post. I find comfort in it too. When I was younger than my 34 years I used to think that getting there was the important part, but through my theatre work, I have learned that the journey is the important part. Getting there is icing on the cake. Break a leg and carry on!