As I think I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I most enjoy about my jazz composition class is being given weekly homework: small doable task that brings a sense of satisfaction on doing it to a satisfactory standard, scope for development if I have the energy, possible to treat as a purely technical practice exercise if not feeling inspired – really, the most challenging aspect is suppressing impatience at the retired gentlemen (there used to be only one of them) who take this as a cue to produce sixty-four bar epics with multiple time signatures and at best only a loose connection to the specified task. They do them; I occasionally write affectionate parodies.
So it’s a sign of the way this term has gone that for about the fourth week running I haven’t really managed to get any homework done at all. Weekday evenings I’ve been too tired to do anything other than stare blankly at the television; weekends I’ve had to work to keep up with everything, so with all the non-negotiable stuff like cooking, house cleaning, shopping and spending time with wife, there’s nothing left for the music. Yes, if it actually mattered I would make time, in the way I manage to make time for a student in crisis or random work issues, but a vague feeling of dissatisfaction at my work-life balance doesn’t amount to enough of a matter.
And, no, I didn’t write a ‘12 Days in the Year’ piece last month. I am no Christa Wolf; she could write notes while seriously ill in hospital, with the conviction that writing is a necessary discipline and even a solace, whereas I’ve written all I want to about the events of 27th November and really don’t want to look back over the hours between digging a hole in the garden and coming home to take Sophie to the vet for the last time, let alone the aftermath. But to be honest I’d actually forgotten, until yesterday, that I was supposed to write at all. It’s all just been a blur, getting through day by day like walking into a rain-soaked headwind, with occasional unexpected gusts and buffets from the side – I’m not sure I can come up with a workable simile here – to make one wonder whether there’s any point in carrying on.
So to be honest my main response to hearing that I’ve been awarded a two-year research fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust was relief; that this isn’t indefinite, that there will be a chance to catch my breath and focus just on research and finally relieve the guilt about various projects I’ve failed to complete, and that I’m not having to take another hit to the ego – with success, I know it’s a lottery, but failure is clearly explained by the deficiencies of me and my ideas.
The excitement will come, I trust, and a bit more of the self-confidence that I need in order to be able to write (self-pitying blog posts don’t count as writing). And I will get back into the habit of doing my homework…
Congratulations, I guess…
Seriously, I hope you’re in a better head space before too long. Getting through a depression (whatever triggered it) is a slow process, with a lot of moments when it feels as if you’re making no progress at all.
Thanks for this. I’m not actually sure if it is depression – if so, it’s an exciting new variety, quite different from what I’ve had in the past. This feels much more physical; also different from the Long COVID but probably connected to it, just an endless tiredness that becomes mental sluggishness; everything takes longer and feels like a struggle, and my thinking doesn’t join up properly any more. The positive take is that my attention span is now almost perfectly calibrated to marking and writing feedback on 2,000-word essays, and I have a little while before the 3,000-word revised versions are submitted…