I feel much better than I did when I last posted. I went to my therapy appointment, and Therapist is great. She nailed something about me immediately: I'm very anxious, but it comes out as anger. So true. I mean, for frigg's sake, I'm nearly forty years old, and I still bite my nails. Down to the quick. Except for a couple periods when I became devoted to getting acrylics, I've never had long nails in my adult life. I tend to bite off the acrylics, even.
So I feel better about the things that I was really worried about, mostly because when I came out of the therapy session, I decided to address them. And, as impossible as resolution seemed, they got resolved.
So now I'm just back to overwhelmedness -- or as I like to say -- overwhelm because of the normal things: I have a conference in mere days that I only have four pages for my seven page conference paper. In the paper, I'm presenting this research that comes from a Totally Different Field, so different we could call it Animal Mating, that I often draw on that illuminates some important issues and proclivities to Root Vegetable Studies. (You can see that people would often say: why use research from Animal Mating in Root Vegetable Studies? Well, I may be the only person who sees that these are related.) So I have four pages of Animal Mating -- and now I've got to draw out the implications for Root Vegetables and Root Vegetable Studies. Gah. Important work, of course, but could someone else do it please?
Last night, between the time that Tot went down to bed the first time and when he woke up coughing three hours later, I organized all my teaching materials for Freshman Class -- so now I know exactly how much grading I need to do, and it's all organized. Wow, I have a fair amount of grading to do, and it really would be good if the majority of it were ready for class on Tuesday. Could I carve out some time today and tomorrow to do it? Of course, but if I do that. . .what about that conference paper? Do I just leave it for the plane? Dear lord.
I must be in denial -- or I'd be anxiety-ridden and therefore, likely, angry. Instead, I'm just tired tired tired even with the thought of all this. While I was never good at the networking part of conferencing and the thought always stressed me out about conferences (note to self: anxiety), I really don't like conferences so much now that I've had Tot. I always get depressed at the thought of leaving town. And then I get there and can't sleep and feel all weird (note to self: anxiety about being gone) when I should feel elated that I can go to sleep and wake up when I want.
All that said, I've been doing some wonderful research gathering for my new elective. There's a field that I've long argued is vital to Turnip Studies that I'm really boning up on. And there's some local interest in there too, so I can immediately turn this stuff over to students too.
I'm teaching the exact same courses in Spring, which starts maybe a week or ten days after Winter ends. Blech. But at least I'm saving all my materials and handouts. I'm determined to be able to get more research done and stay caught up more on grading in the Spring, because I'm not making anything new. Prep done. These are my two core courses. No wonder I get burned out easily. Thank goodness I have an elective coming up soon after.
PS There's a terrible situation at my uni that I really feel I should do something about. Very depressing.
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