I have slept most of this weekend. I am in the midst of midterms and struggles with life, work, love and have no energy for any of it. I’m ready to quit it all and crawl in my hole (yet again) until I’m stronger. <\/p>\n
But of course, I don’t get that choice. The exams require my presence, the jobs must be done, and you can’t not deal with life just because it’s hard. It’s just not fair.<\/em><\/p>\n This week, for the first time since I started this degree, I considered not handing in a paper. I figured one mark a day is the usual penalty and a quiet weekend to work on it would make it a much better paper than the draft I had so far…but then I checked the syllabus: “papers handed in after the due date will not be accepted.”<\/em>. Of course I started to cry and then worked until 3:30 a.m. at which time I fell asleep in the chair for a few hours. I woke up at 5 to finish it and then at 9 a.m. handed in probably the worst paper of my career. The paper wasn’t difficult which is why it makes it so much harder to take. It came down to not having had sufficient time to work on it. Sufficient days, yes, if I didn’t have other responsibilities, but not with the life I currently lead. (Hence the previous post about having to Cut Cut Cut from my list.)<\/p>\n Did I mention the uti?<\/p>\n It hasn’t been good sleep though. My bedroom is the only room in the house warm enough to sit still long enough to get any real studying done. When I sit in my office my toes freeze and my fingers go numb. The living room is drafty and the number of blankets required to keep warm make holding a book impossible. My bedroom is only large enough for a bed, dresser, and bookcase so all studying is done on the bed. Prone. See where this is going? <\/p>\n I spread out, sometimes on top, sometimes below the covers and pretend that I will study until I realize I’m way too depressed and sleep would be so much better. So I close my eyes and wait and hope that sleep will come quickly. Of course it doesn’t. I toss and turn (or close my eyes more tightly and try not to move) until eventually I can hear the tick of the clock. Then sometimes I sleep. My father taught me a wonderful trick when I was young, about how to use sleep time to solve problems. Instead of really resting, we both (and maybe other people do this too and I’m just not aware) let the wheels turn over each and every problem we’re currently struggling with. For him it often results in mechanical solutions to the designs he’s working on, for me it often gets me concepts for artwork: designs, layouts, images or else theses for papers or ideas for projects. I wake up excited to get started. These days it’s not so productive. The answer to ‘what to cut out of my life’ just isn’t coming – it may be time to frame the question differently.<\/p>\n What if I turned it into: how do I combine all these different interests into a way to make a living? <\/p>\n I’ve discovered I’m not the sort of activist I once thought I was or thought I wanted to be. Out-there-in-your-face-activism is exhausting. It consumes your working time and your resting time. I’ve been involved with an action on campus that is making me more and more ill. I believe in it but I don’t like how it’s consumed me. I much preferred the show\/theatre\/art night we put together – the message was clear, it was positive, it was pro-active. The movie night concept is good too – consume, discuss, go forth with a stretched-if-not-opened mind. But when a person or group is responding to something else someone has done then it\u2019s always a reaction. There is no getting ahead. This is what I’m afraid this action is turning into. I don’t know how to change the world and it seems my attempts so far are failing. I can either learn to do this sort of large-scale activism more effectively or I can go back to the positive message sending type of activism. Somehow though this doesn’t really feel like it counts – somehow it’s not ‘activist’ enough. Does this make sense? I feel like if I walk away from an issue I’m failing feminism, women, the world, the victims… I hate the way the guilt sits on me.<\/p>\n