Greetings, friends!
I made the classic mistake of conflating “out-of-town” and “vacation.” As it turns out, doing a bunch of stuff for 7 days in a row is actually exhausting. Who knew! I crash landed (metaphorically, thank god) back in Lansdowne early Friday morning with a bad case of jet lag and a sprinkling of existential dread.
I also returned to find that every pharmacy in my area was wholly depleted of the ADHD medication I rely on for productivity. The days since have been a blur. I tried and failed to self-medicate with caffeine, which has all the same digestive side effects and only a small fraction of the attention-sustaining ones. Day after day, I spent hours staring at the screen doing everything but the one thing I was supposed to be doing: an extensive media audit for one of my freelance clients due Wednesday afternoon. It was just like the olden days, pre-Ritalin, at Penn: I’d fight a losing battle with my attention span all day and then, at roughly 3:30pm, snap into a s…