Once again tonight, like many nights before, I sit face to face with the silence and the obsessive spirit in my heart to get things done. I do not know where it comes from, this disease-like presence that engulfs me when something sits undone, when I can think of nothing but checking it off, when I forget to sleep, to eat or drink, when I do not know if any time has even passed. How ugly this looks when it is happening, and they tell me how they wish they, too, could be as unbothered by distractions, as absurdly motivated as I tend to become, and I do not know what to tell them. It is not something for the faint-hearted, not that I had any say in being the way I am; only I know it is not the end all. If there is any good in it, it is in the minute right after, the first sixty seconds of completing some undertaking. It is all you get. It is all that stands between relentless effort and the ever-present pointlessness of life.
Now that things are done, what can I do but sleep? I have finished myself and exhausted every ounce of energy in me. It will take me a week to even get out of bed properly. I will linger under the duvet and pretend I still need to sleep for most mornings that will follow now. And what came out of it? Probably nothing; satisfaction for a little bit, I reckon, but that is all. And now, I sit here writing, which is yet another instance of this precarious nature, a glorious banging of my head on the wall as the letters from this keyboard fade away, having been struck over and over, over and over. I only wanted to sleep, but I had to write, and so, having no spark of energy in me, I lay on the couch gathering enough so I could pass muster, so I could finish one piece. And what will come out of it? Nothing. Thirty more minutes of shut-eye would have been a better trade, as is always the case, and yet, my mind refuses to succumb to common sense. I am a prisoner of my own body and mind.
I wish, with all my heart, that I could just let things be, but it behoves me to act on what is undone, what is broken, what seems ajar or awry, let sleep, let hunger, let thirst, let all go to hell.