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I’m not sure when the exhaustion started. It began settling in as the days kept rolling, nesting in between my bones and capturing the muscles in my legs. At first it was a distant hum I chose to ignore, as I dragged myself from my desk to a dance class to a meeting to the kitchen to cook.
I put in the hours. I had dutifully cultivated a routine over the past months that helped me ensure I’d get things done. I could shift around what I wanted to do based on how I felt, always having a minimum baseline for ensuring nothing fell through the cracks. But the occasional “bare-minimum” days became more frequent, accumulating one after the other, and I no longer saw much point in getting up early in the morning.
It was only about a week ago I began to acknowledge that I was always tired. As soon as I woke up, I couldn’t wait for the day to finish. The thing I most looked forward to, the highlight of my day, was its end, when I could finally sit on the couch, sip some wine and watch something easily digestible.
As a freelance translator moonlighting as a dance instructor I have gotten used to energetic sacrifices, to pushing myself even when I don’t feel like it. I am by now used to the push and pull, to showing up and performing even when all I want to do is lay in bed and watch videos. Feeling tired was just not an option. You push and do…