Fighting Through the Exhaustion

I am tired. No, I take that back. I am exhausted. The exhaustion is trying to speak to me and tell me it would be a much better idea to relax some more. “Sit back. Drink your whiskey, and listen to some chill tunes,” it tells me. Would I ever love to do that, only without that dreadful feeling of wasting an entire night and not accomplishing a single thing. What is worse is realizing that “Oh my god, it's 10pm!” Where the hell did the night go? I feel so much better with myself when I push through and get some work done rather than wasting away my time and feeling useless.

It's kind of like that childish thought that we have, you know the thought, the one where we think we'd love to eat that entire bag of chips or box of ice cream, but if we go through with it, we feel awful regret afterwards. As a kid, we take the risk and do it, but that's when we were learning. Now, we know the consequences. Learning consistency in writing works similarly. I feel like a child all over again testing the boundaries.

What I’ve been doing is hyperfocusing on that excitement and high that I get after I've written for a while and completed a thought or idea in the form of words. As I sit down at my computer, I imagine myself at the end feeling pumped and purposeful, and then I let my fingers fly across the keyboard and let the magic happen. As silly as it sounds, it works. Living out the feeling at the end is always as satisfactory as I imagined, which is why it continues to work. I am not tricking myself, I am just reminding myself of the pure bliss that comes after hard work.

Another way that I get amped and push past the exhaustion is to turn on that song, album or artist that is currently speaking to me and let it enter my veins. My head begins to bob, shoulders begin to move, and I let the music take over my body. I let my mind go. This mental state sometimes creates the most open and honest pieces. I am letting myself be free, and it feels so damn good.

At the end of writing this, I’m still exhausted, but I’m now exhilarated. I feel self worth and accomplished knowing I have nothing hanging over my head to regret. This accomplishment awakens me.