xxx hardcore xxx.

It's 34 degrees in Christmas Island today, and I just got finished drinking a cup of tea on my front porch steps, sans coat, sans hat, sans mittens, and most importantly, sans goosebumps. I am so hardcore.

On a different, but still hardcore topic, there's been quite a bit written about success fatigue, "an indicator that your work patterns are not meeting your long term needs, and that your resiliency is not what it used to be. It has been described as a state of tension and preoccupation with maintaining high standards of performance, until those standards seriously strain physical, emotional, mental and relational limits." The phenomenon is generally witnessed in individuals with high power jobs, like lawyers, doctors, and corporate climbers. But what about academic fatigue? Isn't the pressure that comes along with years of higher education bound to result in the same general misery?

I'm scheduled to be done with school in 15 weeks, which in the grand scheme of things is not that long. But in the meantime, the perpetual juggling that grad school entails is wearing me out. Teaching, speeching, classing, and thesising leaves little time for actual living. Don't get me wrong, I certainly set aside time for people and cats and websites and online television, but even those moments of down time are overshadowed by the stress of everything else. This afternoon, academic fatigue is feeling like a pretty accurate diagnosis.

--buelsy (has the sunday blues).