When the Fantasy of Plenitude Meets the Reality of Depletion

Like most of you, I usually approach the weekend with the hope of making progress towards a list of personal and professional goals and usually leave it with despair at not having made any of that longed-for progress or, what actually feels worse to me, the realization that, even though I made progress, I was much further away from my goals than I had thought. It's enough to make a person conclude that Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend" is a paragon of insight.

This weekend has felt worse than most, despite the fact that I have made demonstrable progress on a number of fronts. Maybe I'm just worn out from the brutal schedule I've been keeping this semester. Or maybe I'm coming down with something. The reasons matter less than the result, which is that I keep producing metaphors that depict my condition as emptiness, a reservoir drained to the point where refilling it seems highly unlikely. Even the drives that typically push me forward in times of malaise aren't working right. Hell, I just had the idea of joining a monastery, because it would mean that I could stop staring at all the books on my shelves.