Thursday, October 30, 2008

I’m At The Beach With My Friends And Everything’s Ok

For some reason I felt like fatigue really hit me with a hammer yesterday. (Or, I suppose, kicked me with several thousand horses, as it were). I had to get up pretty early to go to yet another doctor’s appointment. Then I felt like the weight of my backpack with several casebooks in it was literally crushing me while I walked between the bus stop and the law school. And Wednesday is my long day of classes, so I was pretty worried about being able to be alert through them all. However, I also discovered that large quantities of caffeine do nothing for fatigue – I just ended up feeling exhausted and jittery.

And when I wrote that sentence, I decided “exhausted” wasn’t a tired enough word. So I looked it up in the thesaurus, and I got a good laugh out of the options it suggested:

all in, beat, bleary, bone-weary, bushed, crippled, dead, dead tired, debilitated, disabled, dog-tired, done for, done in, drained, effete, enervated, frazzled, had it, kaput, limp, out on one’s feet, outta gas, prostrated, ready to drop, run-down, sapped, shot, spent, tired out, wasted, weak, weakened, wearied, worn, worn out

Drained is pretty good. Sapped, spent, beat. Run-down, I’ll take. Bone-weary is fairly accurate, especially considering the pain in my joints. But crippled?? Disabled??? Hey – that isn’t very nice, thesaurus! DEAD?!? Oh. Ok. Moving on.

Anyhow, after I finally got out of class yesterday I had a fairly overwhelming desire to crawl straight into bed and not get out for several days. But I’m really glad I didn’t. Instead, I headed downtown to see an old friend who was in town for a couple of hours. We were really good friends in junior high. I was there when she started to teach herself to play the guitar and made her first attempts at songwriting. (The title of this post is one of her 8th grade song lyrics!) We sort of drifted our own separate ways during high school. And it had been a good eight years since we had seen each other, or even really talked.

It was really good to see her. In some ways, she was the same friend I remembered from when we were thirteen. (And she confirmed to me that, even as a seventh grader, I was a ridiculous over-achiever.) But she was also different in a lot of ways. While she was a serious pre-med in college, her life took a different turn after a serious injury. Instead of med school, she is now a very successful professional DJ! DJ Lady Sha was recently the first female DJ to win the Winter Music Conference DJ Spin-off in Miami! She’s pretty amazing.

The thing that really struck me was that she had a trajectory for her life – a really specific plan for what she thought she was going to do – and then her life forced her to change direction. And while she ended up taking a completely different path, she is really good at what she does and she seems really happy. I think it probably isn’t easy for anyone to completely change the direction of their life and still be happy and successful. But now I’ve seen proof that it’s possible. And that’s worth getting out of bed for no matter how bone-weary I feel.

2 comments:

~kelly marie~ said...

I love your thesaurus look-up. I think my favorite is sapped :).

I'm glad you got to reconnect with an old friend. Her story is really inspiring. It is so good to know that someone can change their path and be happy and successful. It really helps to hear that. So thank you for your post! It was the perfect thing to read before heading off to yet another blood test. (I think my doctors are vampires ... only explanation I can find.)

DJ Lady Sha said...

Well.. i guess the injury was my opportunity to take lemons & make the lemonade I deep down always wanted... to make a living off a music. You were there from day 1 when I picked up my guitar... and here we are 12 years later... you'll be the first to get a copy of the album once my DJ career funds its creation lol.

Your work ethic has always inspired me... and i am so proud of where you are today and where you're going. after we left boulder, my mom and aunt said... "you can tell.. Mariah's going to succeed at law"...

I only hope that you follow the path to work that brings you the most happiness & fulfillment... at that point... it seems less like work. I wish the energy & drive to keep it goin!!!

love love love!