Progress reports went out this week, meaning that I've survived the first half of the first quarter. And things haven't been as bad as I feared. In fact, now that I'm immersed in school I find that I spend lots of time on it mostly because I want to do a good job.
For awhile I even had the notion that this year my life was actually balanced. I mean I'm still cooking dinner most nights rather than resorting to frozen dinners. But then again I am also starting to drop the dinner salad and the vegetables from the menu. If the main dish has a vegetable in it, I figure it's a two-fer and if not, well, I console myself with the fact that at least it's not completely processed food.
I've also been able to keep up my running, going three to four times a week. I even ran in the BYU 5k yesterday and knocked three minutes of my last 5k race time from back in July.
But underneath my successes, there are signs that I'm not holding it together and that this so-called balance is just a facade. The first sign came a few weeks after school started. I was driving home during rush hour and was tired as usual. While stopped at a light, I reached down to pick up my fallen water bottle and without realizing it, I let my foot slip off the break and I bumped the car in front of me. Lucky for me the lady in the car was really nice and didn't even ask me to exchange insurance info. Instead she said, "I just want to make sure you're okay," which probably should have been a sign that I wasn't. But I decided to see it as a freak accident instead and kept up my rediculous schedule.
Two weeks ago we had a special family home evening with the missionaries and a 16-year-old girl who was investigating the Church. I managed to stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up some ice cream, in addition to getting dinner cooked in time to eat it before everyone arrived at our place. I even made brownies. Really, I should have known something was wrong when I couldn't find the Magic Shell I had purchased just an hour and a half earlier, but the cogs in my brain didn't start turning until I opened the freezer and couldn't find the ice cream. Yup, I had walked in the door, answered the ringing phone, and set the bag with the ice cream and the Magic Shell on my bed. Lucky for me, the ice cream was pretty solidly frozen to begin with, so although it had melted, it hadn't started leaking. And it was in a fabric Trader Joe's bag which also protected my bedspread. There have been many other incidents that seem to suggest that I need more sleep, but I'm too sleep deprived to remember what they are. So tonight I decided to go to bed earlier and sleep in a bit (i.e., until six) rather than go running at five, but instead I'm writing this blog entry. I guess change takes time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I hear you. The more I need sleep, or rest in general, the more I avoid it for some reason. Too much to do? Just do something else! It sounds like you're really busy and you need some good reading time in a hammock. Look into that.
So did you guys have milkshakes instead? :)
I hear you, too. For me, it wasn't so much the sleep deprivation as it was extreme stress. I found that my ability to multitask while driving (admittedly unwise, but generally I do it successfully) shrank to nil. It was all I could do to get to the client site in one piece, even though I knew the route by heart. It was like walking in a fog. And little things like ice cream and hard shell sauce are just like so much peripheral water vapor. Get some rest, sister.
Nah, we didn't have milkshakes. I just dug down to the not so liquid ice cream. :)
Post a Comment