There are periods where you become unaware of what brings you the most joy, or what makes you feel most filled up because there are the trivial and not-so-trivial responsibilities and the pressing ways of making a living that run dominantly parallel to what you've identified as a primary interest in your life.
On nights when I desperately try to preserve my inner richness, after hours of work that may possibly have lived in a vacuum, the "work" that is, of course, valuable for its results, and what it affords me and others-at-large, I attempt to accrue some cultural and self-esteem by reading in order to singe my edges closed after a fraying day.
I struggle with not getting exhausted, which is a silly thing to be disappointed about.
There's an exhaustion of wanting something too much when it might not manifest. It's difficult to know that something that you want only lives in its idealized state, and it will continuously make you disappointed because your expectation doesn't suit the framework of your real life. This is a lesson you, or I've, never seemed to learn -- that the wanting's reward will be paid out with serial disappointments. With hope, and eventually, two words that go hand-in-hand in this regard, the reward will be paid out in full.
Really, my approach to reading and writing thoughtfully has always been this greater attempt to fill in and preserve this better "personhood" that I've, perhaps, created from some sort of fiction in my head.
On the way to this "work" we have, on a bus route, in the quiet idle moments we seem to swat away without fully cherishing, I believe there's more to be worked through than what's in motion.
Ideals and sensibilities flutter at the foreground during errands and chores, and it's an exhaustive responsibility to be attentive to them, to race after and charm and perhaps manage these thoughts and ideals that fly throughout the day like birds caught in a house, to make us, in turn, richer people.