I'm So Tired From Speaking

It’s odd to romanticize not speaking, I suppose. Arrested Development had NO TOUCHING! I have NO SPEAKING! It’s not that I don’t enjoy speaking, to be clear, I do host a podcast after all, but I’ve found over the years that I look to speak less and read more. Monday through Friday, I spend so much time speaking on my podcast and speaking at my job that I typically get frustrated on the daily that I am speaking so much, that I am listening so much, that I am, really, engaging so much. Those moments, late in the evening, when it’s finally quiet when I finally can be left alone to my articles and to my books, sometimes overwhelm me. It often feels as though the heaviest of weights have been lifted from my shoulders. 

But it scares me. 

We all aim to arrange my life the way we would prefer, but that’s not how life works, obviously. Oftentimes you don’t spend your mental capital where you would prefer it to be spent. It’s not fair to my parents that I don’t wish to speak to them on the telephone because of how much I spent talking to people who aren’t the least bit important to my life. I often feel guilty when it’s apparent I need to read and write and be alone at the library for hours to recharge my spirit. But I work this job that zaps me of, well, me, so that I one day have the job that does the opposite. I long to work the job that gifts me with hours of solitude and quiet so that when my lovely girlfriend and my caring parents and grandparents call, I’m present and open and thoughtful and mindful because they deserve that. 

I think about this a lot, and it’s probably why I’ve grown accustomed to the knots buried under my shoulder blades. I found a new library in the area to study and work in yesterday afternoon, and it was delightful. Libraries often feel like home for me. Home is wherever you're comfortable, and I’m more comfortable there than I am in my own home most days. In a library, you won’t cross paths with a roommate who jumps at the opportunity to converse when you make eye contact. You make eye contact with people in the library and then you look right back down at your book. It’s understood that you let people be in a library. Perhaps this is why I need libraries so much, it’s one of the few places on this planet where I can have “Fuck Off” plastered across my forehead and it’s understood and respected. 

With the podcast, with the graduate school coursework, with the job that pays the bills, with everything else I have found that, in the last year, I have made apologies a central aspect of my life. All of the apologies center around the unfortunate reality that I’m stretched thin. Leading so many conversations every single day partnered with a job that requires me to do the same in a different way takes its toll. 

I don’t like that I have found myself not wanting to speak so much in the last year. I think about last spring a lot, in the beginning of the pandemic, when I would spend my days, literally every single day, visiting different parks to read. Outside. All-day. With walk breaks in between. Everybody was on edge with, you know, that pandemic shit, so people were not jumping to speak to one another. People were afraid to speak to one another. It was delightful. I remember I had written down one afternoon how freeing it felt to be able to spend an entire day in solitude. I relished my time at Stone Mountain Park, alone, on my blankets with my water bottle and my books. It was clear to me then how much chasing a dream was taking out of me now. 

I turn thirty in a few weeks. I’m going to spend it in Asheville with my wonderful girlfriend who I love very much. I love her heart, I love her smile, I love how she makes me feel, but I love that she understands. She understands when I’m emotionally and mentally spent. This all we want, really? To be understood? I’m quite lucky in this regard. I’m lucky that we’ll depart for North Carolina and it will fly by because it was spent talking and laughing and listening and enjoying each other’s company. I won’t be pulled where I’d rather not pulled. My mental capital can go where I actually want it to go. 

I hope this is not forever. This apology business, anyway. I don’t like it. I don’t like not wanting to speak to my mom because I spent hours speaking on a podcast and hours speaking at another job. I want to speak to my mom because I love my mom. I hope this is all temporary, that the moves I’m making now will pay off in the future. A future where my daylight hours are filled with solitude and my evenings are filled with adventure.  I long to spend my days writing and reading and podcasting and spending my evenings talking to the people that I love without the knots in my shoulders or the tension in the back of my head. 

I don’t want a lot. Mostly, I want to be left alone. Left alone, mostly, so that I’m the best I can be for the people that are the best to me. Is that spoiled? Is that too pie in the sky for an almost-thirty-year-old to imagine? Maybe, but I want that pie. 

Chase Thomas is an independent sportswriter based out of Knoxville, TN where he is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee. He’s originally from Stone Mountain, GA, and has been published in VICE Sports, ESPN’s TrueHoop Network, SI’s The Cauldron, SB Nation, Screen Rant, and more. You can email him chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.