The never-ending slog

Yesterday I went for a slow but rewarding, lovely bike ride.

I thought I’d sleep better for all the physical activity, but NO. I only managed about six hours of sleep, and woke up groggy and slow.

Today, I took advantage of time alone in the house to play some drums at real-life volume, do some crafty stuff and by the time Sweetie got home, I was wiped. I went back to bed around noon and woke up at 5pm.

I can predict another night of poor sleep.

Worse, it was another gorgeous day and I feel like I wasted it inside.

I wish I could know what lies ahead for me, that I could have something to give me hope for my future. I feel so unproductive and slow, and very alone most days. My whole world feels like it’s shattered dry clay that’s being crushed and prepared for re-mixing and remolding, and it’s incredibly draining and slow.

At the same time, my interest in Jewish communal life has shriveled to almost nothing.

I’m no longer attending services, I’ve informed the Bremerton community that I will likely not be available for High Holy Days next fall (and if by some miracle I am, I won’t be the same cantorial soloist I was last year). I admit that I hope they will look for someone else. I look at my Machzorim (High Holy Days prayer books) and I just can’t get excited.

So much f what I’ve done over the last quarter-century suddenly feels equal turns pointless, inauthentic and exhausting. It’s pointless because after twenty-five years of plugging away, I’m no closer to the cushy center of job security, no closer to the near circle of the folks who really can do this all year and not have to kill themselves looking for paying work. It feels inauthentic because I’ve arrived at a place where I currently don’t feel drawn to sustaining this work (for myself or for others). And it’s exhausting because I recognize that, ever since Covid shut my career down in 2020, I just haven’t felt as truly valued and supported as I might have once been. There has been nowhere for me to turn without my feeling the tension of being seen as a human resource more than I feel seen as a soul.

Somehow, all of these threads have twisted into a time and place that finds me really depleted, isolated and sad — and at the same time, totally out of the energy I’ve needed to sustain my end of the relationship [between me and Jewish community]. I’m bonked. My pitcher is empty and I am so clearly burned out on pouring myself into what I’ve been doing for all this time. I am mentally, emotionally and physically drained and hurt. I have nothing left to offer right now.

While it may not always be this way, I’ve arrived at this point at a time when I’m in my 60s and pondering the downward slope of my working arc, and finding a new career at this point seems unlikely. I’ve arrived at this point as my body is beginning to falter from a host of issues, and really the only way forward for me is a kind of retirement, funded by Social Security, Disability or a combination of both.

That’s not something I could have foretold in early 2020, when I hade just released my fourth album and felt like I was on the verge of something that resembled a Big Break. Three weeks later, the world shut down and my Big Break never came.

So now I find myself in a netherworld of exhaustion, sadness, self-realization and waiting.

I have no idea where it will lead, or how much help I can hope to find in a world that’s on fire, both figuratively and literally. I wish I knew the way forward that would make the most sense.