I've decided that never again will I question my abilities on this front if I see this request on a job description. It always seems to show up on jobs like mine: "must be a motivated self-starter."

What this has actually meant is "must be able to work in isolation for at least eighteen months on a project that one's co-workers do not understand and cannot assist with, but know that they wanted to have access to at least nine months ago."

It's been a long week.Without lapsing into a sea of complaints, I'll say this: right now, I'm overwhelmed and mentally exhausted. I knew going in to this job that there would be periods in which I simply wouldn't be able to cope with the tide of work, no matter how intelligently I planned my time or how many hours of overtime I put in. I'm sliding—fast—into one of those periods. I guessed rightly that it would be coming at the end of January, but I misjudged its strength and ferocity.

It is three a.m. The glass in my hand is empty. I am neither drunk nor awake, sober nor exhausted; merely a place in between that defies explanation. It is three a.m., and the glass in my hand—filled only once—is now empty. I slept somewhere between one and two hours the previous night, and followed it up today by somewhere around sixteen straight hours of work at the convention.I am exhausted; the brutal floating exhaustion that leadens feet, shortens calf muscles, and makes my lower back ache.