The fall 2020 semester is ending, and I am so very tired. I used to fall sick at the end of each term with something minor but unpleasant that would demand I rest. Ear infections, a “throat infection” which sounds more horrifying than strep, a cold that would leave me brain fogged and bone weary but mostly fine. I didn’t last spring, probably in part because my family, probably like yours, was at home.

I wasn’t even supposed to be here

Likely, I should have been tireder. I probably was, but it’s not like I had time to notice. With daycare closed, my partner and I directed our toddler between rooms while trying to juggle meetings; I’d say she drifted like a balloon, but really she banged around the house like an overly aggressive Roomba, bouncing off furniture, crushing toes, making surreal announcements that punctuated our meetings or just screaming. (When I’d ask if she was ok, she’d smile and say, “I’m screaming!” At least someone was having fun, I guess.)

Spring 2020 was a disruption, an anomaly. Fall 2020 was something else–a failure, an inevitability. Most of us worked through the summer, which isn’t unusual on surface, but the work required was different. Usually, in summer, I read, I write, I edit. I go to archives.

But, last summer, I served on committees and answered emails. So, I hurtled from that bizarre spring into the surreal summer, and there was no break and nowhere to go.

3 months of bureaucratic endeavor left no time for research and makes me one of the many academic women falling behind. I alternate between feeling angry and feeling ashamed. I’ve white knuckled through so many things; why couldn’t I just white knuckle through this, too?

We’ve all been cheated of something, I suppose, but some of us got cheated more.

My research has been moved decisively to the back burner — the project I have funding for isn’t safe or feasible at the moment, and so much of the work I find fulfilling has slipped through my fingers. It’s hard not to despair.

Miles to go until I sleep

There is so little to treasure this year, and yet I’m trying. A documentary I provided commentary for came out, the fulfillment of an oddly specific, probably silly childhood dream. We got to attend a friends and family screening before things got bad, and that’s a nice memory, but it’s nice now, too, to be able to send people to watch it via online cinema, which sounds fancier than streaming.

My colleague Matt Payne and I finished a draft of a book project that I’d started calling the albatross several years ago.

I wrote a children’s book and managed to find an agent to represent me thanks to the help of a children’s book author I respect a great deal. A game I collaborated on with a former student got into a festival; another game I made won an award from the jam I made it for.

It isn’t all bad. It is all so hard.

We’re still at home, so, unsurprisingly, I’m still not sick, but a week or so ago, I found myself consumed by exhaustion. I still am. I’m so tired. I’m so very tired. At least, I suppose, I don’t have a throat infection.

But even for those of us having the easiest times relatively speaking this is an extraordinarily hard time. I wish I was viewing this semester with hindsight. Right now, it feels like it never ends.