I am three and a half weeks into my senior year at Furman. It has been a whirlwind. I am taking five classes, leading the student government, participating in clubs and extracurriculars, applying to grad schools and national fellowships, studying for the GRE, and trying my best to keep up with my hobbies and other acts of self-care. This is usually how the start of the school year goes for me, but this time has felt different. I guess it’s because I’m aware that I’m in a big transition period. I am beginning to wrap up my time in one community while actively seeking another to call home while I complete a doctorate. I find myself missing aspects of pandemic life— Zoom, especially. I miss the slowness of many of my pandemic days. I have cut down on many of my extraneous extracurriculars and time commitments, but I am still entirely too busy. Zoom made so much more accessible and I forgot how energy-sucking it is to run around from place to place.
I’ve put some things up on my digi-garden.1 A couple are half-baked ruminations on different things. Another is a little gallery of photos over the past month. I also have many drafts that have not been put up.
I've been entirely too busy and my mental health has been declining between keeping up with intensifying demands of academics, leadership positions, social obligations, hobbies and other things I do for myself. I have taken it as a chance to unapologetically say no to things. To cancel, and ask for accommodations to Zoom in from my apartment. I've missed this aspect of the more uncertain chapter of the pandemic (though, I feel not much has changed except our intense desire to suspend belief and pretend that everything is "back to normal" as it might've been two years ago now— which I don't even feel like I fully remember, let alone want to go back to.) Most of my professors and work supervisors have been on board with this. Only one has refused to allow me to Zoom into their class. To which I argued was against our pedagogical values, but really did not care because I didn't want to go to the class anyway.
A very short playlist of songs I listened to while laying in an eno wondering if I had covid on the second day following exposure— a day without any answers.
Most of my days so far have been spent catching my breath (wheezy and not wheezy) as I've been struggling to feel motivation through classes that have been disappointing and many extraneous obligations as the semester has begun. It's a lot to juggle, and truthfully, I'm tired. Following two covid-semesters I signed up for a 3 week may course, 3 weeks of high energy summer orientation, then 10 week summer research, 2 weeks of medium energy fall orientation, immediately moving into the start of the new school year with not a single day of rest in between.
I like to stay busy, but the lesson I carry post-original-quarantine/lockdown is that busy-ness is not fun, productive, or healthy in sustained bouts like that. Slowing down— slowness itself is where joy, productivity, and health is. It was very obvious in the middle of summer 2020 when I'd returned to my mom's house and still had no idea what the future held in terms of covid, that I actually needed the pandemic.
I am not sure what would've been the thing that snapped me out of the spell that had me convinced that busy-ness, rushing around, doing as much as I possibly could was the way to live. Maybe I would've truly run myself into the ground. I continue to be grateful for realizing I couldn't live like that any longer. That is part of the reason why I am so resistant to this pressure to return to a normal we don't even know any more (and is still not possible considering the state of our country.)
Somehow, even though I have dropped many of the extracurriculars that no longer brought me joy or claimed time and energy I was unwilling to give, I still find myself too busy and spread too thin. This is something I'm actively trying to address. My point, though, is that this exercise in isolation as I figure out if I actually have covid or not has given me a little bit of peace, though a little uncomfortable and inconvenient in some ways.
IRL, in between juggling school and other things, I recently ran my first race: a 10k in downtown Greenville. I ran on short notice because my friend could not. I have run that far before, but not in a while. (Most days when I run I go about 3 miles and call it.) I was surprised to see how comfortable it felt. I could’ve pushed myself, but I enjoyed every part of it (except for the post water station cramp for half a mile.) I am looking forward to preparing for a half marathon, my goal for this year, and for a sprint triathlon.
I also recently celebrated my 21st birthday. My best friend and boyfriend surprised me with a small gathering of my close Furman friends, my favorite food: breadsticks, my favorite dessert, and of course (because what is a college birthday without these?), lots of Trulys and White Claws. We celebrated with a couple more friends again on Saturday, hiking to Turtleback Falls about an hour away. We waded in the freezing cold water and ate snacks above the falls.
Here are some things I’m reading:
- The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
- Intimations by Zadie Smith
I’m currently working on a project for my senior seminar in English focusing on crafting a portfolio of essays. So I’m reading a lot of essays, many of them written by people of color writing about themselves, the world around them, and other things. Other books on my list are: Here for It by Eric Thomas, A History of my Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt, and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraquib. Just to name a couple. In other words, it’s been really enjoyable and I’m excited to see what comes of the project.
That’s all for my update. Thank you to those who send me random emails and snail-mail (Henry, I got your postcard!!) I’ll catch ya soon,
- Asha
This link has been removed retroactively because I have decided to transition away from using the digi-garden as my platform of choice for digital sharing and connection.