That's the limit...

I really enjoy keeping busy and doing lots of different things - it's fun to be working and also be in school. Usually its manageable, one thing gets busy while another is in a lull, but once in a while, everything goes crazy at once. Last week was one of those weeks.

At school, it was the last week of classes, which meant two in-class presentations, three papers due, and time to start preparing for finals.

At work, we're working to prepare our annual publication, which means lots of editing, which is time-consuming and requires a quick turn-around. I also happened to have a couple of early-morning events for work last week - I'm not a morning person, so having to be at the Capitol building by 7:30am is not ideal.

It all seemed to be going pretty well, until Wednesday when I realized I'd hit the stress limit. I had my day very carefully planned. Early telecon on campus, PhD meeting on campus, then work from home, Chinese left-overs for lunch, school work, etc. But then, mid-morning, I found out that Jeff had already eaten the left-overs. Clearly, this was a disaster. Now everything could not go according to the plan. I was convinced my day was ruined.

A little way into the complete despair caused by the already-eaten-lo mein, I realized that the issue may not actually be due to lunch, and may just be a sign that I needed to take deep breath, relax, probably take a nap, and de-stress a bit. Which I did.

So by that evening I got back on track with the work and felt much better equipped to handle things like deciding what to eat.

And clearly I've survived both the last week of classes and finals, so it all turned out well in the end!