Lilly

I should be drowning—anyone in their right mind would be.

There’s a state of being so busy that it reminds me of being depressed, at least in my own experience. It shares some of the same qualities: the ugly moment when you realize you haven’t showered in four days, the to-do list with its ever-yawning check boxes, the blank moments of indecision about how to proceed. In other ways it’s almost the opposite, of course. There’s a similar sort of despair, an underlying fear that I’ll never get anything done. But this time I’m doing everything and I’m still afraid.

I’ve never been able to keep a paper planner. My friends’ are marked up everywhere, daily and weekly and monthly in colorful ink. I hold the world in my head, because if I write it down I’m giving myself permission to forget it until I check the list again. So my to-do list is a sticky note on my laptop. No more than five tasks at a time, and only the major ones. Preferably with a single due date. I never tackle them one at a time. My days are an unholy mess of essay writing and data reduction and French vocabulary and differential equations, and can you do this part of the presentation on Tuesday? Why? Oh, it’s the part no one understands.

Part of me hates it. I have headaches every day from looking at a screen too long and the work is never over, a continuous stream of do this, solve that, write this, analyze that. Part of me is in love with it, too, and as long as that lasts I think I’ll be able to stay afloat. ♦