Breeeeaaaathe...

With all this September stress, I'm trying to keep things in perspective. While I'm stressing about getting all my reading done, I know that people are experiencing real stress and real suffering. I'm trying to find places that I can give myself breaks. This week I met with my advisor at school and she agreed to let me put off my thesis work until next semester. I felt like I could stand straighter the moment I asked to make the change. On the way home from my appointment with her, I had a window open in my car, and the vibration of the air coming in that window was making my head throb. I cracked open a back window and felt instant relief, and knew that this is what had just happened with my advisor, too. Just taking the pressure off in one place means that I can relax more across the board.
Tomorrow we have our only day off and I'll spend it reading. My new (and LAST) professor is assigning more reading than it feels possible to achieve in a week, but I'm trying to remember that sitting on my porch in the sun, at my comfy home, with two cats and a wonderful husband inside, is a darn sight better than what others are having to do on Saturday. I can do it.
Don't forget to breathe!!

Too Stressed to Title This Post

I'm not prone to freak-outs. Someone once described me as "human prozac." But around this time of year I can get a little anxious. It all started several years back when I started at my last parish. I was hired mid-August, and shown my office in a giant old (disgusting) convent. Nothing had been left to me, including any list of kids/familes or volunteers. The office and the entire building were packed with garbage- my office was filled and dirty and dark. My first job would be to sort through and clean out this place and then get organized while planning a year of programming for 1000 kids and families.

I found myself having trouble sleeping- I know I've mentioned here that I always have music going in my head, but when this all hit, I heard it all even in my sleep- the same song, over and over and over and over...I had dreams of cleaning and cleaning that office and woke frustrated and exhausted. I still remember that it was a Christina Aguilera song... but blessedly I can't remember which one...

The spell was broken when I finally had a good night's sleep with the help of the help of a friend. But since then, at around this time of year, it comes back just for a while, until I give it the one-two punch of a great night's sleep. I have a sample sleeping aid that I have kept in a glass box with a little red hammer next to it. I don't want to use it until I have to.

The last couple of years, since being at my current parish, it hasn't been bad- but this year, I think, is going to be a doozy. I'm taking two classes and an internship, and this year my ministry seems to be exploding- it's all great stuff that I'm excited to do, but somehow the already-full calendar pages in my date book make my chest hurt a little. I listed all the BIG projects on my white board yesterday and stood back to behold the source of my new anxiety. I don't want to do any of them poorly. But you know, I like to be busy- I do my best work when I'm busy- and there's nothing on the board that I dread, so maybe the fluttering I feel is the wings of excited butterflies, not nervous ones. I have so much (as always) to look forward to.