I want to write something and I’m really exhausted. What have I done today? I worked and then attended a very high demanding cognition lass, then I went home and assembled the bike rack to my bicycle, took me almost three hours, which I initially thought it was easy. It was not, but I had fun doing it. Now I came to the library hoping I could read and do something more productive towards my dissertation proposal, but I failed to do it. I feel really exhausted for no reason. I wish I had more energy to continue. The coffee cannot really help me with anything apart from making my heartbeat faster and I start to feel jittery while my eyes are half closed. My brain is still functioning so I tried to write something as much as I can with my eyes close. I can feel the keyboard, so I can actually type without having to look at tit, and I will make edits later. I attended an exhibition of a friend today and it was really touching. It was an autoethnography of motherhood in academia. I was struck by one of the quotes by her. I could not remember exactly, but it was something like: “How can we call our achievement success when success means separation?” I feel really related to that quote, as I am also an international student who has been here for three years, and I have only been home once. I miss my family, the smell of home, the heat of my city, the noise of the neighborhood, the pitch sale of the old lady for silky tofu every morning, the barks of my dogs, how they breathe happily when they see me. I miss the sea; every corner of the city just brings me memories. They are slowly fading in my mind, and I don’t want that to happen. I really want to go home. I really do.
I’m stressed out. My level of cortisol is rising higher; I can feel that. I should slow myself down and try to take it easy. It’s not going to be a success overnight. I know it’s a series of struggles, of sleepless nights, of anxiety, of concerns, of blank thoughts. I know I have to try, but it is really hard for me. See? I got easily distracted because I tried to do so many things at the same time. I want to write in Spanish too, but I’m not too confident. I will start my own diary of learning Spanish and I have to try. I keep trying, but why do I try? Why do I still want to learn it? There is no purpose of learning, there is no ending. I seem desperate and hopeless like how I learn the language. I know that setting a purpose or a goal would make it easier, but then, the ultimate motivation. Who is helping me? I used to learn it to be immersed in the Hispanic culture, to understand my friends better, and to reach to a guy’s heart, but I failed to do so, and it brought me pain. The heart is broken, but the language is innocent. Sometimes I just have to learn to love the language without any reason and embrace it. I manipulate myself that I am good at language learning, and I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve been trying every day to stick to a habit of exposing myself to at least one Spanish activity in a day, like watching films, or reading children’s book. It’s only writing and speaking that are very passive to me, I speak to myself and write in my diary and use basic phrases. I need to arrange my time working on all of these and finalize everything together.
