The past two weeks have definitely been unlike earlier weeks that have taken place during the almost three months of Hurricane Harvey recovery. These weeks were filled with feelings of disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. I hope I will be spared a series of weeks like these two for my foreseeable future.
Surprisingly school wasn’t really even a contributing factor to these fairly terrible two weeks. Classes weren’t particularly stressful, and I even did quite well on my midterm exams. The past week at school barely even felt like it had even occurred, thanks to the holiday break. However, the days did begin to drag and almost blend together into one long feeling of vague discontentment. I don’t think I would have normally welcomed an occurrence like this, but with the other aspects of the weeks, I embraced it with open arms.
Unfortunately, my dealings with home recovery were not filled with vague feelings of discontentment. The drywall is still incomplete after almost four weeks of working on it, and we had to fire our contractor. Besides falling behind schedule he also installed the wrong type of drywall in our garage. On a positive note, our insurance finally came through with the estimates of the money we will receive for repairs and personal contents.
Luckily my exhausting efforts in putting together the contents list are seemingly going to pay off, and we should be receiving almost the maximum amount for our personal contents. I was hopeful we would have already been back into my home by this time, but I now can only hope I return to my home before Christmas.
In recent entries I’ve discussed the burnout I’ve felt due to the workload I was putting on myself. Between working my several jobs at Lamar University and continuing to work on several film projects, I have felt myself starting to falter over the past two weeks.
I could feel a full sense of burnout and exhaustion building up for a number of weeks, but I thought it wouldn’t fully hit until after my home was fully repaired. I’m unsure of how I will deal with this, even though the Thanksgiving holiday break has allowed me at least a few days to rest. I am hopeful that by easing up my schedule by triaging some projects, I can afford myself some sanity, and the ability to survive until at least the end of the year.
Through the exhaustion of an overbearing schedule and the pain of not being able to simply return home, I am beginning to feel as if my life may never return to how it was before Hurricane Harvey. At this point I am just hopeful I will soon be able to return to my bedroom and I will finally be able to lie in my new bed, close my eyes, and lose myself in a peaceful slumber.
Dispatch from Lamar will be a weekly feature in The Hawk.
