I thought I was going to get so much writing done this summer. I did manage to crank out a sixy-two page thesis that convinced my advising professor that I could have a future as a literary critic and send off a lot of (admittedly, rejected) query letters. Even still, summer always used to be a time of creation for me since there was so little motion and change associated with the season. Back when I was in school, it was the only time that I wasn’t juggling homework and quarters, shifting from social season to social season. Summer was about taking a break from academia to live.

It gets a little different when you don’t show up to classes and your entire life seems to become for integrating work and whatever it is that you want to do with your life.

Travelling, graduating, moving, and job-hunting have taken a lot out of me these past three months, but I’m always reluctant to let myself believe that’s a valid excuse for not doing more. My boyfriend’s always telling me that people do, in fact, have upper limits of what they’re capable of, and I’m always telling him that shouldn’t matter. I continue to cycle through my manic moments and burned out recoveries. As frustrating as the process is, so far it’s the only thing I’ve found that allows me the headspace I really need to create. Lately, I’ve been more moderate. No extreme diets or sugar binges, no staying up past midnight or getting up after nine. Exercise, sleep, food, and even sociality have been coming in carefully regulated packets in the interest of seeing if this really does help me stay sane. It does, but I go crazy slowly as I realize that this strategy reduces my creativity to the same tiny packets. I can’t do substantial work like that. This whole summer I’ve hardly written five-thousand words of the story I’ve been working on. A hard blow for someone who likes it best when NaNoWriMo has got her churning out ten thousand or more words a week.

It’s hard to realize that you have to be crazy to get anything done in this world.