NARRATIVE wasp was certainly not my problem—that I found myself watching in silence as the last segment of his twitching abdomen clumsily shimmied into Paul’s shoe. It was not long after I chose not to help the wasp that I found myself abandoning my allegiance to the animal kingdom’s co-bastard-in-chief: mankind. It was pure luck that, as I looked on, Randall crawled his way out the back of Paul’s shoe, unharmed, and began his waddling journey through his pint-sized desert anew. Paul did not seem to notice. One week later, I was on my way to work when I felt a stabbing pain. Initially, I thought I’d stepped on glass, but, lifting my shoe, I saw a wasp curled up between the two leftmost toes on my right foot. Without thinking, I grabbed him and threw him into the street. I took a step off the sidewalk to look down at my attacker, still curled up and wriggling in the road. This got me thinking two things: 1) Was this wasp stinging me today some sort of karma? If it was, was it karma for not helping the other wasp, or for not helping the man he could have stung? Is there any difference if helping others is the imperative? Or was God just punishing me for wearing sandals in September? 2) Ouch, fuck, my foot. Either way, I let him be. I think I have a newfound respect for The Wasp. It might not have the fuzzy exterior of a bee, or the good press, or the sense that if it did sting you, it was only out of noble, suicidal necessity. What the wasp does have is something more powerful: the ability to remind you to be slightly less of a bastard when possible through, if nothing else, its own bad example.
Rekindled
confessions of a recovering workaholic BY NAOMI KIM ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA SEMIZHONOVA
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! - Edna St. Vincent Millay, “First Fig” Dublin, December: overcast skies, deadlines looming ahead. They told me studying abroad would change me. They told me it would be exciting and rejuvenating.
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Instead, I am trudging down the street more slowly than I have ever moved in my life because just being alive feels so exhausting. I am sitting in the library for hours without speaking to a single person. I am staring at my laptop without the energy to proofread my draft. I am crying silently for no reason in the dark of my room. I am crying silently in a cathedral I’ve wandered into. I am Googling things like “sad and tired for no reason” and getting results about depression. Then, finally, I am home! Quickly, I realize I should be figuring out my summer plans like everyone else and reading all the books I’ve wanted to and writing now that I finally have time to and getting my sleep schedule back on track for the spring semester, and how has it already been two weeks since I got home and I haven’t done anything? But then— Then, we are eating dinner one night. My brother is talking about a trend in South Korea that emphasizes identifying moments of “small but certain happiness.” I realize that the things that used to make me happy just don’t anymore—that I have turned everything into work, and I am so, so tired of work. Then I am wondering if it is always going to be like this, all the rest of my life. Suddenly, I am crying.
*** I didn’t know what being burned out meant until then. Sure, I knew what being tired or unmotivated or stressed felt like. But this—this was something else. Studying abroad itself is not what burned me out. It was spending five semesters, both at Brown and abroad, with a self-berating mindset of I should be working and I should be more productive and I should be doing more. I held myself to a strict sleep schedule, which involved getting up early to get things done, and I held myself to it even during breaks so I wouldn’t get out of the habit. I jam-packed my to-do lists. There was no reason to stop working if it meant being on top of my readings—they were endless, so I figured I might as well get ahead if I miraculously had the chance. When I wasn’t working, I was restless because surely there was something I was supposed to be doing. I made lists of things I needed to do during breaks—pieces to write, books to read. I was determined not to waste time, and as time went on, the category of things that counted as “wasting time” expanded. I didn’t just burn my candle at both ends. I set each side on fire with a flame torch, attached dynamite, and wondered, “But is this really enough?” In an Opinions column for the Brown Daily Herald last October, Anna Kramer ’20 wrote that Brown has embraced and endorsed the unhealthy mentality of “do it all — and more.” Overcommitted overachievers, we are burning our candles at both ends. Maybe the short-lived light that results is somewhat lovely—Brown was, after all, ranked as one of the happiest colleges in America—but we too often end up the way candles do: burned out. Maybe this is why Brown is also often ranked as one of the most stressed universities in America. Here—and everywhere, really—work is not only a socially acceptable addiction, but also one that is encouraged and admired. We dedicate ourselves to work, classes, and extracurricular activities—all of it. We admire the people who work a lot. We’re proud of being busy. It feels like busy people are the ones who are somehow doing it all, the ones who are going to go the farthest, the ones taking the most advantage of being at a place like Brown. And if I’m not busy, then surely I’m not doing enough. And I never quite felt like I was doing enough—which is perhaps part of why, even as I grasped that I was burned out, I found it so difficult to
