Exhaustion

My friend once said that he felt old, and noted the consequences of such thoughts.

Now, while I don't feel old, I do feel rather exhausted. Drained, you could say.

This has happened before, and it isn't just boredom. I feel like I just don't have what I need to have anymore, or something similar to that. Hell, I can't even come up with the right words to describe it.

I just...feel exhausted.

I'm tired of the monotony of the topics I write for at work, even if I'm not quite completely drained by how the work is structured. Like handling cases of customer care back in my call center days, these things have ceased to really get my interest going. They've become mundane and dull to me, which means my writing slows down to a snail's pace --- something I find completely unacceptable.

My mind drifts off now, and hasn't drifted this far off what I should be focusing on since my last few days at Intelligraph. Like I said, it isn't as if I think things are bad or crappy (they need improvement, to be sure, but every office is like that). No, things are actually rather neutral --- except for that whole "night shift" thing, which I object to. Work is just...dull.

I'm coming to hate the scope of the topics I can write for, and the keywords that limit things further. The whole damn field of medicine is starting to grow stale for me as something to write about, which means that I've officially stopped caring how much I produce, whether or not I can overproduce, and if the stuff I put out is as good as what I used to.

As far as my writing mind is concerned, I'm just in it to do it. Nothing less, but definitely nothing more either. I guess you might be able to compare this to the realization that trying to go forward is pointless because there is no going forward. I guess the comparison I can best come up with now is with a treadmill. All that work, and you don't really get anywhere.

Right now, my mind just wants to sit back, take a month or two off, and do nothing. Obviously, because of commitments, because of the economy, and because of anything and everything that can be related to this, I can't. The best I can do to alleviate the continued process of my own mind cannibalizing itself is to play Magic: the Gathering, building and improving decks (not always mine) along the way.

Seriously, the time my mind spends on improving and planning my decks and strategies in that card game has managed to keep my mind from entering into a complete state of creative disrepair. This game, along with Code Geass R2, are the only things keeping me from declaring the creative side of my mind dead in the water. I suspect that, without these things to keep my mind off work both during and out of work hours, I'd be the literary equivalent of a lifeless rock. The worst part is, while they're great for keeping the exhaustion from becoming too bad, they're not permanent solutions.

I've been in this before, and the results were not pretty.

My writing skills suddenly decide to shift into two different gears. First, the assembly line, which continues to write what needs to be written for the office. Get things done and written and made to specifications, but without any personal touches or attempts to add a little polish to it. The stuff just rolls out of the assembly line without any fanfare or decoration. The second is the set of my mind that delves into my creative projects. That side of me goes dead and requires time (an obscene amount of time) to get jump-started again.

I hate it when that happens.

Gods, I'm tired. What I'd give for a chance to just lay around and do whatever I want and write whatever I want for a month right now, but life isn't about to let me have that or anything close to it. This whole "transfer to the night shift or resign" vibe I'm starting to get from the office doesn't do anything to help, either. I'd fight it, try and negotiate a better deal, but I'm mentally exhausted from the monotony of work, the lies I have to tell myself each day, the stress of having to work in the city I hate the most in the world, and the masks I have to wear to get through the average day in the office.

I'm tired. So very tired.