big relieved sigh

One thing about working in academia, is that you have slack periods and busy periods.

Last week was a busy period. I nearly went nuts. I had taken on too much stuff - on top of giving and grading two exams, doing my usual round of teaching and prep, my youth-group duties, I also had meetings at the end of the week and additional volunteer work at the beginning.

Saturday I bugged out. There was further volunteer work but I didn't go (I had warned them not to expect me) because I was (a) tired, (b) had those exams to grade, and (c) the many hours spent driving to and from the meetings (Honestly? I was in the car for longer than I was in meetings) made my intermittent sciatica flare up and I was miserably in pain. (I'm some better now, thanks to moist heat and exercise. The only two things that really help. Well, ibuprofin helps too but exercise and heat help more).

I couldn't sit comfortably Saturday so after I got my grading done I leapt up out of the chair and did standing-related activities. Mostly cutting pieces for a quilt I want to make. I put music on, it was that sort of quiet meditative rainy Saturday fall afternoon that I love. And I was happy.

One thing I am learning is that as I get older, I need more time away. I cannot work like I did in grad school any more - where I could push on for eight or ten hours at a time with breaks only to eat, get drinks of water, and pee. Now, I need more breaks - and I need more downtime. Especially when I deal with difficult people.

(Heh. The sermon this Sunday? One of the foci of it was how we are called as Christians to love even the "unloveable" people. I suppose that includes the people like Spiderman and Mopey Boy I talked about below. I'm not so good at loving people like that, especially when I'm stressed out myself. Something I need to work on: more patience with people and a willingness to "do the duckie" - let things like that roll off my back and not be upset or angered out-of-proportion by them. I'm sure the two guys I was talking about have problems of their own in their lives, perhaps problems that make them act in the aggravating ways that they do. What I have to try to do is see them as three-dimensional people rather than cardboard cutouts. I guess.)

I am basically a loner and I find I am happier and more energized on Monday when I spend at least a few hours on the weekend either in my workroom sewing or doing other crafts, or reading, or something that doesn't involve listening to someone talk at me.

I had also fallen into the trap of watching too much television. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those anti-tv fanatics - but I find when I watch too many hours, particularly of news-related programming, I get kind of depressed and defensive and almost develop a siege mentality - like "the whole world is out to get everyone, why should we be happy?"

Instead, this weekend, I listened to music and forgot about the idea that the world is out to get us. I kind of managed to remove myself from the stream of bad-feeling I had gotten caught up in.

And Thanksgiving is coming. I cannot quite believe that it's only two more full weeks, and then a short week (2 days) until the break. My parents are coming to visit me; one of the things I want to start doing is to gradually clean up my house. Not that it's that important to them but it's important to me; I feel like one of the ways I can present myself as a "successful grown-up" is not to have a house that's totally trashed.

(One of the things I need to do is get a big box for all the catalogs I've been receiving. At least the ones I want to order stuff out of; I should dump the rest. I'm getting between five and eight catalogs a day. Oh, and catalog companies: please just send ONE catalog unless you have new products. Do not slap a different cover on the same old catalog and send it out to all your people. I'm looking at you, Bas Bleu. And also you, Daedalus. And you, Aplets and Cotlets. And you don't need to remind me of your existence by sending me eleventy hundred catalogs. If I want to order from you, I will keep the ONE catalog you send. In fact, multiple identical catalogs tick me off and make me less likely to want to order).

I also might - in the next week and a half or so - once my house is clean - get out my little fake tree and my old teddy bears and the various decorations I've collected over the years and start decorating. And pull out the good old recipes and make cookies again. And start going through the catalogs where I dogeared pages of things I might want to buy for people as presents. I love buying presents for the people I love. All that good stuff. Festive stuff. Happy stuff. Stuff that is different from the horrible grinding round of Bad News and Difficulty.

(And - I suppose you could say? All the stuff I'm looking forward to doing, at least obliquely celebrates the Good News. Or at least the Good News for the subset of the religious population I belong to.)

It's funny, but last week, I was all "Christmas decorating - meh, I won't have time this year, it will be a struggle to fit it in, maybe I shouldn't do anything" but now I'm in a good mood and wanting to do it. My energy is back.

So anyway. Yay rain. Yay sewing. Yay Thanksgiving and getting to see my parents. Even yay cleaning up my house - it's something I actually do enjoy when I have time to get into it and really just buckle down and CLEAN without worrying about working on something else. And especially yay being in a better mood and actually having time to breathe and think and be this week.