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After a week of gorgeous sunny weather, blue skies, warmth, the rain has arrived. Yesterday was cloudy, and even though I knew I should try and get outside as soon as the sun came out, I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I spent much of Monday in bed.
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I am a “bedseeker.” That is what mental health professionals call this coping mechanism. As a teenager, I was a night owl; I hated getting out of bed in the morning for school. As soon as we got the internet in my house, I would stay up all night, then sleep all morning. I even had a 12-hour shift job that let me continue this schedule on days I started work at 7pm. My bed is my comfort.
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When I started taking brain medication, I noticed my sleep schedule changing. I no longer struggled to get out of bed after waking. Now, I could actually get up when I woke up. But that’s changed over the last year, back to old habits, and with quarantine, it’s only grown worse.
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I work today. We’ve rearranged our classrooms to allow for “social distancing.” Instead of my half-moon setup with a desk-width between the students and me, my boss moved my classes into the biggest room, where each of us gets a whole table to ourselves. The kids thought it was great fun.
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I’m only working today and Friday. It’s good and fine; I know that I’ll be OK, financially, because I know I can always ask my parents for help. But it means a lot more time by myself, in my house. Quarantine is not so different from everyday for me. I don’t have people to meet up with, even if we were allowed. All my friends live faraway. And I miss having local support now, more than ever.
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I watch the two sisters I teach, who live across the street, playing outside, inside their fence. They ride their bikes in a big circle on the driveway, the little one following behind the big one. At least they have each other.
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I don’t know if I’m going to do anymore baking on YouTube right now. For one, wow, that’s a lot of dishes to wash–my absolute least favourite chore (if anyone wants to date me, they have to be willing to wash the dishes; I’ll do the cooking). For another, it’s one more thing, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. I’ve been recovering from burnout since September–though I wasn’t willing to call it burnout until this year. It’s a hard word to own when I work part-time and have no responsibilities outside of myself.
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My burnout is wholly related to how hard I’ve worked for the past 10 years to build an independent life for myself. It is, I believe, a particularly millennial experience (and why I identify more with the latter generation today, when I once identified with the previous). I keep trying to make a living on my own, and nothing has worked yet. Baking on YouTube was me trying again, without even thinking about it, trying a new thing with the hope of monetising it, spreading myself too thin once again.
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In my post on the 15th, I wrote You can follow me here, with RSS, you can see photos and videos on Instagram, and you can stay up-to-date through email. And then almost immediately, I created another space to update, to maintain, to post. I don’t need more; I need a lot less.
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My brain likes to remind me of all the things I “should” be doing. I “should” be trying harder. I “should” be where everyone else is. I “should” be writing more. That last one? It’s not only the most common refrain, but the oldest, too.
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When I started this post, when I needed to write something in the TITLE space, I heard in my head that first lyric from “Eli’s Coming” by Three Dog Night, which I will always remember from the SPORTS NIGHT episode from the same name. Dan always thought Eli was a bad situation coming (Casey explains, however, that Eli is an inveterate womaniser). The song opens with a low organ and a mournful call.
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Eli’s always been coming, and now he’s here.