I am brain dead.
Must have something to do with walking a gazillion miles in the National Zoo Wednesday, then going to the pool the next day and generally having fun. I swear, sun, water and fun with massive exercise breaks the brain as much as too much intellectual meandering can.
I have a zillion things to do, write and clean, and until my brain turns on again, I can't do any of them.
The worst thing about August is the way I fall into extreme lazy mode--as much as my kids do. The relative lack of structure kills us all. Since I have a hard time operating without some external structure anyway, I'm afraid I am not much help to them in this area. I hold them to a certain structure in terms of things we have to accomplish, but there doesn't seem to be any particular order to it all. And we all sleep in way too much. I've been waking up at 7:30 a.m. but I lie in bed until 8:30, just letting my mind wander. I hate when I do that. It's such a waste of time.
I think of the students who tell me they get up at 4 a.m., travel to ridiculous places to work (because there's none here), take their lives in their hands doing things like high-rise and bridge construction, take English classes after, care for their families, rinse and repeat. My life is ridiculously cushy by comparison. I have simultaneous guilt and tremendous respect for them.
At the same time, I think my life is somewhat boring--not when I go on day trips, but just in general. I want to go visit my friend in the Boston area, and I want to go to New York and see the statue of Liberty. But even if I had money, I don't know if I would have the energy. After taking the train and the metro to the Zoo, I feel like a wimp. How do those people do it every day when they have to work in the DC area? I would be exhausted.
I feel like I have no endurance. I have short bursts of energy, but I die in the middle of the day. After about 1 or 2 p.m. I am about useless. That means I am not as productive as I would like to be for about half the day. In fact, even though I slept enough last night, I am still tired this morning. WTF?
I can't tell if I am just hard on myself, lazy, exhausted or ill.
I hope it's that I am being hard on myself.
