As you all probably have already noticed (and hopefully are miserable about [not miserable in a depressing way because, while I have very often fantasized about bringing complete and utter demise upon my enemies by holding them captive in a facility called Dr. Jayne’s Torture Funhouse, none of you qualify as my enemy, and also I’m not that cruel and depraved {yet}]), I’ve delayed Mixtape Friday. Until next week. Because, well, because the thing with coming back from vacation – especially from two weeks of non-stop bromancery with your best boo during which the “daily grind” consists of breakfast, a walk around the neighborhood, more food, movie-watching, more food, and irrigating semi-permanent ass-prints into the living room couch – is that there’s a period of readjustment where, as a misguided form of protest against returning to reality, one can do nothing else but succumb to the overwhelming desire to do, well, nothing. And because I am nothing if not brutally (and sometimes offensively) honest, I must make it clear that I am currently in that stage.
Right now, I am watching episodes of TV shows that I have seen countless times because even the thought of thinking, makes my brain hurt. I am still in my pajamas. I am eating tacos because they take less than a half-hour to prepare, and while I would prefer ice-cream to the chocolate bar I’m eating for dessert, guess which was closer to me? Today, I am a failure at life and at writing, and I am okay with this because my bouncing back, and coming at the world full-force with a rejuvenated sense of worth and a complete manuscript of the next Great American Novel is inevitable (so is the return of my modesty, I promise). I mean, c’mon, I already did my lucky “PUBLISH ME!” dance in front of the Ominous Tree.
But all that success can only come after I have thoroughly vegged out and avoided all the responsibilities of life.
The easiest, and shortest, way to say all this, I suppose, is this: I am burnt out. T and I were talking about this on our last night in our favorite small town while eating the burgers she had grilled in our backyard. “I’ve stopped noticing things, finding things interesting,” I told her. “I feel like I’ve peaked early, and now I’m just stagnant.” She brought up the good point that perhaps it’s because, what with my full-time job and weird-ass hours working said job, I now have less time to simply just sit and think. And when I do have that time, I’m far too tired to even want to.
The two weeks off simply wasn’t enough to produce the kind of writing I wanted it to. Because, for me, it took me two weeks to finally make up for a year’s worth of exhaustion; two weeks to finally feel fresh and cleared enough to start something. And, of course, by that time, we were due to go back to our regularly scheduled lives where work simply gets in the way of creative pursuits; where I must give up my time to think and write for the purposes of having enough money so that I can afford what little time I am allowed to think and write. How depressing is that?
So today I am going to watch as many episodes of as many TV shows as I want. I think I have earned it.
– Jayne
Lady Bromance 