Essays

...like the one I should be writing instead of blogging right this very minute.

I've been freaking out all week about the paper that I am trying to write in order to be ready for the conference-style presentation I have to give on Tuesday. I am currently onto my seventh page, which is good. I need around ten.

This paper has really taken over my life though. I've been taking time off to do things that I want to do that sound fun (like going to the movies with my cousin last night and having dinner with a friend on Monday). But mostly my whole week has been eaten up by the big ball of stress in the pit of my stomach.

I gave up being stressed my sophomore year of college. That might sound crazy, but it worked. I literally said, no more stress, I'm done with it. And then for the next nearly five years, I stuck with it. No stress, at least not more than a tiny, manageable amount. I'd effectively given it up (with exceptions for the time around my thesis prep and subsequent defense).

And now it is back full force. To the point when all the work I have to do seems so overwhelming that I'm not sure I'll be able to get it all done. This has never happened to me, in seven years of college.

So it is a new and different experience for me, but life is not nearly as bad as that makes it sound. Most of the time I am happy and engaged and excited about my work and my friends and my life. But every couple of days I have to seriously sit down and put all of my concentration into the task of not freaking out.

Thankfully I'm done teaching in three weeks, done with school in five. Then I'll have myself a nice little summer full the kind of job that I don't have to invest myself in emotionally. I want to be one of those people who flips the slow/stop construction sign when the road is down to one lane. Where would I go to get a job like that? I want a walkie-talkie.