cthewind's Blog

This week’s post finds me in a middle, the middle of the semester. I’m familiar with the crash that occurs around Week 7—empty seats; vacant, tired eyes; too many parking spaces.

I call these weeks (7, 8, 9, and sometimes 10) the “trudgey weeks,” that stretch of time in which initial enthusiasm is spent, the end is too far off to motivate engagement, and the energy too low to invest in much beyond survival.

Trudgey weeks are cyclical and systemic. We could function a different way, yet we have not yet done so. Worse still, it is easy for each one who suffers to feel uniquely alone, the only one unable to keep up and produce.

It’s a lie!

We’re all in it. Instead of escaping or withdrawing, what happens if we adjust our expectations of what we can do when we’re together? What if we could tell the truth of the trudge and benefit from the solace of community?

Below are two blessings for the middle of things:

…for one who is sputtering

Those intermittent explosive bursts of effort—

they are evidence of your commitment

You know you cannot, yet you steer yourself toward can

What you are able to do in this moment is not your best, yet it is precious nonetheless

All of the moments leading up to this one—

the ones where you took time to plan and prioritized your values

as well as those in which overambitious yesses prefilled your calendar—

push out episodic manifestations of productivity,

masking the sputter and the running on fumes.

Because you’re committed,

may you be protected from shame and the embarrassment that sometimes accompany the experience of sputtering

May you be loved back into your limits

and filled in the time of rest that must come. Is here,

with or without your permission

…for one who can neither work nor rest

For this stretch of time you are without clear direction,

and your powers of self-control are wanting

You need both work and rest, so the tugging you feel is true

No external forces compel you to one or the other,

and, absent the urgencies of punishment or consequence,

you are subject to yourself

Today you won’t be your favorite subject,

if, in truth, you ever are,

because you, ever complex, capable, and caring,

are headed in too many worthy directions with momentum in none

Nothing will be whole today; nothing complete or satisfying

And so this is a blessing of the pieces—

the snippets of work that will remain unfinished,

and the insights that tell you what kind of rest you need and for how long