Exhaustion Sets In

A flush of rose pink warms the window in front of me. The machine gun rat-tat-tat of my fingers on the keyboard has stopped. I stare at them, useless sausages now. They seem detached from me somehow, the way a zombie must feel. I can't make sense of why they aren't typing. Staring at the screen, I can see there is plainly more typing to do, but nothing happens. Slowly, the warm rose light dies and the harsh concrete gray of daytime takes over.

I remember being younger and pulling all-nighters. It always seemed like such an accomplishment, pounding away on the coffee and the keyboard, blazing through the work. Feeling like I won a prize at the end of it all. Gloating the next day as my mind tried to make sense of things.

May be I got old the last few years because right now, there is no victory bugle in my ears. Only the day coming to life, shrieking onward into the light. Its not pleasing. Having gotten older, shouldn't I have learned not to do this to myself?

I worked for more than nine years at night. The last night job I had was the best shift of all. My shift began at 7:00 pm and ended at 7:00 am. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off; four days on, three days off. Routine.

It's been a few years since I worked like that. It's probably been that long since I saw the sun come up before I went to bed. It's been at least a decade since I sat before my computer, knowing that in an hour, I will have to go to class on no sleep and take a midterm. What in the world am I thinking?

Normally, I am one of the most relaxed people when it comes to midterm exams. I go to class, I do my reading, I ask questions. I do all the things to be prepared. So, how did things get like they are this semester?

I decided that I need to finish my degree, and that I need to do it as quickly as humanly possible. This means taking a large class load, nearly double full-time. It's a lot of work.

For anyone who has not taken more than 19 units in college, imagine working two full time jobs and a part time job. Now imagine that at each of those three jobs, you have a different boss. Further, you have a different boss each day and often several times each day. All of these bosses have specific jobs they want you to do, but they are only going to give you the tools to do the job slowly over a period of weeks.

Once the tools have been given, your bosses expect the job to be done promptly. And then you get paid. Except, unlike a real job where you have a fixed amount of money you receive, in school your payment is a grade. Do a good job, get a good grade. Do a lousy job, and you get a lousy grade.

Now, it happens to work out that each of the three jobs overlaps, and most of the tasks that are given for each job need to be done roughly at the same time as all other jobs. Call it a bottleneck of progress. Long periods of doing little followed by short bursts of frantic energy.

Midterms happen to be one of those glorious times when all the bosses want all the best work at the same time. My bottleneck this week began last Thursday when instructors distributed the prompts for the take-home written portion of the exams. Being prepared didn't save me from the all nighter this time.

Now, 36 pages later, I think about all those long nights at work, slaving for the man, getting paid in real American dollars. I think about seeing the sun coming up and wanting to go back to school so that I wouldn't have to see it happen again. Now I wonder how I fooled myself.

At least it won't happen again until finals week.

Infest Sacramento

      This week I got to experience what life must be like for the one percent, looking down from their posh penthouse suites, wondering when the angry horde might appear.

      It is usually a sign of impending inconvenience when I see a door tag hanging from my apartment door. It means someone I don't know has to come into my home for one reason or another. It's an old building, and I understand the point, but it is still inconvenient.

      Oh, this was different though. This was inconvenience on a whole new level.

A unit in your building is being treated for bed bugs.

An inspector will be checking your unit on Thursday, September 29.

      The inspection turned up no bed bugs. A few disgruntled carpet beetles, yes, but nothing else.

      In the first days of the protests, it must have been easy for the 1% to deny the reality of what was happening all around them. The long-haired, dirty people living in the park and protesting against people who have money and jobs must have been good for a laugh from the office windows.

      A few days before the inspection, I killed a small bug. I didn't recognize it, but it was a dark brown color, and tear drop shaped. It had an ugly triangular head like a tick, but it wasn't. I denied the reality of what it was.

      The Fat Cats probably got angry in the first week. Probably when their children started asking questions. It must be frightening to be the spouse or relative of one of the 1%, out in public, never knowing who recognizes you from Google searches, who is lying in wait plotting some horrid demonstration against your way of life. Protestors are forcing them to wear their wealth like a badge of shame and there is no clear remedy.

      The inspector recommended that we go through all of our items and throw out cardboard. He left glue traps for us to set out at night and told us about the treatment, an elaborate process with sketchy results. The unit next door was scheduled to be treated Friday, Oct. 7.

      The thought of an infestation of parasites feasting on my blood while I slept in the safety of my home grew into a paranoia. We started sleeping on the floor of the living room, the farthest point from the infested unit, spending twenty minutes each night moving plastic tubs making room to lie down. Even then, the thought of hungry parasites would send six-legged tingling down the inside of my arm. Day by day, I became more defeated and bed bug dread caused me to lose more sleep.

      The treatment for our unit was scheduled for Tuesday Oct. 12, a grueling twelve days after the first inspection.

      Emotionally, this process had taken a steep toll. The grinding exhaustion of constant vacuuming, cleaning, boxing and bagging wore me down. The hopelessness and inescapably of the infestation smothered me. Every dark spot on the carpet, in the sheets, or on the wall made my blood go cold. Bed bugs became the only thing on my mind.

      If the protests continue, they will drive the 1% into chaotic depression, eroding their families and their wealth. They will stop working and start spending money in every creative, useless way to strike back at the parasites. I mean protestors.

      So far, we found four bed bugs in our unit, the one I killed, a dead adult, a larva molt, and another live one that appeared in a trap the day after the next door unit was treated. Our unit was treated once and will get treated again in two weeks.

      It wasn't the parasites themselves, but rather the thought of them feeding on me, and what I had to go through that caused stress in my life. And for the 1%, the images of protestors on Facebook with signs saying “Eat the Rich” is probably enough to start a cold sweat under their black Armani suits.