I’m reading Kelly Monroe Kullberg’s Finding God Beyond Harvard while I ride my exercise bike at night. She was a Harvard chaplain who started Veritas Forums, “university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life’s hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life.”
Reading about this sort of intellectual activity, not to mention the retreats and late-night conversations, makes me feel like a hollow tree. If you cracked my skull open, I’m sure you’d find my dusty clumps of cat where my my brain used to sit. I don’t harbor a single profound question about the origin of the universe or about my purpose in the grand scheme of things because every single thought in my brain centers around questions of survival. No angst, no intellectual debate, no scintillating theories. Just mundane stuff like:
Will I pull together a healthy meal tonight?
Did I match up all the socks?
Is that cat poop on the ground?
When can I get out of this house so people will stop asking me for stuff? And interrupting me?
And why can’t I fish a single thought out of the murky puddle that used to be my brain?
I’m empty, people. Dry as the cat’s bowl. Barren as the ivy-strangled bush in my front yard. Disconnected from community, unplugged, turned off, burned out.
The big questions are settled in my mind. That’s the good news. The bad news is that my mind is so full of minutia that I can’t think of anything interesting to say.
And I’m lonely for the me that used to have a thought in her head that didn’t have to do with dirt removal or drain unclogging.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
Did I just write this or did you? Sigh
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Whoa. You gotta stop reading that stuff! (Just kidding)
Seriously, I’m mightily impressed at your exercise reading. I know the book exists, and I know I should have read it already, and here I am an academic, but my brain is so full of administrivia I haven’t even bought it or checked it out, let alone tried to plow through it. To plagiarize you a bit (listen to me whine), “I’m lonely for the me that used to have a thought in her head that didn’t have to do with committees and personnel issues.”
Maybe you should start another blog called “Harvard For the Harried.” Do book reports. Discuss clogged drains and black holes in the same post. I’d drop by. I’m serious.
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Awww!! HUGS!! I know just how you feel! You know the great thing though? You manage to write that in such a way that it is enjoyable to read! So don’t worry… even on your off days you are a contributor!
I was laughing at myself tonight because I posted earlier today about something really really ridiculously funny. Stupid though. Then I posted something else that was rather inane and rambling, totally lacking in meaning. Then watch it… I will come off in the next few days with something totally contemplative.
Who says you have to be on that plain all the time? Honestly I begin to question people’s genuineness when they are 100% devotional and contemplative 100% of the time on their blogs. It honestly begins to sound fake.
I like real. Even if that includes cobwebs and cat poop!
Nan
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I’ve found that once the big questions are settled, the others tend to be no more than cat poop and fluff.
So don’t beat yourself up.
I still like to read the deep stuff, but my joy comes from remembering a sweet small voice in the night saying ‘Move over, I wet my bed’. And my answering voice saying, ‘get in on daddy’s side’.
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Mel, you and I are twins separated at birth. I could have written this same post, and probably will later this week. I was kicked out of book club last year because I didn’t read the books – they were too heavy and too mind boggling, and there was no way I could get through them. Talk about feeling stupid.
Be kind to yourself.
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I love this post, you have such a great way of expressing yourself. I posted something simular to this Friday on my blog because I felt so empty and hurried. But I also posted last night “this to will pass” because I felt so much better. Some days life just kicks our butts 😦
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And I was just thinking you were at the top of your game!
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Isn’t that kinda like the conversations you mentioned? Don’t they have to do with the current dirtyness of things & the cure/fix of said dirt?
Life can be simple & plain. Sometimes we try to make it harder & more complicated then it is.
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Hi Mel, I haven’t been by in a while, you look great!
I can only sympathize in the loss of significant thoughts, my once scientific brain is now full of important calculations like how much macaroni and cheese should I cook tonight as not to waste noodles for tomorrow.
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Glad to know it’s not just me!
I’ve just added your blog to my “daily fix.” thanks for sharing.
Alison
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“Dusty clumps of cat” [grin] you do have a way of capturing the essence of things.
I’m surprised by how much my brain has woken up since I’ve started teaching my kids. THey are at the why stage so I find myself thinking again in ways I haven’t in quite a while, and figuring out how to explain it to child brains. FOrtunately for me teaching is just the thing I do, so it’s an activity that stimulate my brain. THough reading kid science books puts me to sleep everytime.
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It is a well known medical phenomenon that each child you have sucks out a little more of your brain. It is possible to regenerate growth but not until they have their own apartments and have to match their own socks.
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Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, Mel. A lot of people seem to be going thru the blahs…maybe it’s less sunlight now?? A longtime Portland blogger whose site I go to every now and then surprised me last nite when I went to her blog and she announced she’s shutting hers down. Said she has REAL family and friends she needs to spend time nurturing instead of cruising Blogland all day long. Sometimes it is hard to find how to ‘balance’ it all…life, commitments, kids, husbands, households…and still find time not to lose sight of ourSELVES!! It gets awfully easy to push ourselves to the back of the closet and forget to come back out again.
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I joined a blogging book club and haven’t read a single book on the list.
I swear my IQ (what there was to begin with) has dropped 5 points for each year I’ve had the girls.
Tonight I combined pork with a package of “mystery meat” I’d forgotten to label. At least I knew it wasn’t chicken. Turned out to be a small chunk of beef. Add enough barbecue sauce and no one would notice, right? Right, especially with a tortilla wrapped around it.
I haven’t written an actual post in days. I should do something about that. Eventually.
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It’s hard to find time to think, ponder, meditate, reflect when there is noise and commotion all around me all day. The last month I’ve felt similar feelings to what you’re describing and have started getting up an hour before the kids to write in my journal, read, think, take time for looking inward rather than reacting to the outward. It’s helped. However I suspect you’re already up at dawn and busy from the minute the clock goes off so it may not work for you the same way it has for me but it’s what’s worked for me.
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You’ll find them again. We’ve all been there.
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You know, we think a lot alike! I’ve determined that my brain has atrophied since I’ve had kids. I worry that my DH will suddenly wake up one day and say..’who is this brainless woman I’m married to??’ and not recognize me at all. (Not really, he’s completely faithful…but you know what I mean!). I feel like I know the solid truths of the Word but to debate or discuss theology would completely throw me. I live in fear that someone will ask me an intelligent question and I’ll stare at them in stupidity and not be able to answer. Duhhhh.
Sigh….
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Amen, sister. I no longer have a brain like a steel trap; now it’s more like a broken mouse trap that catches nothing.
I agree with Beckie when she says she worries about someone asking her an intelligent question and she will be unable to answer. I can no longer hold my own in intellectual debates with my husband or friends. It is scary, scary, scary.
I feel disenfranchised, and I’m the one who put myself in this situation! I chose to have kids!
But even with my atrophied brain, I wouldn’t change my choice for anything. Wonder if my brain will ever grow back?
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Oh my. I recognize this feeling. I call it “foggy headed” and sometimes wonder where all the brain cells went and why I just don’t seem to have anything to say. About the time I think this is permanent, I’ll have a moment of clarity. Sure wish I had more control over the timing! Anyway, you wrote a great post about having hollow head!
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