I took this picture earlier today to email to Dan along with a bunch of others in a series (it ended with my head on a pillow, a very nice place to be). I think it accurately sums up how I'm feeling nearing the end of a semester that seems to have been revved up from the word "go": damn tired. If I made a list of the reasons why, well, suffice it to say there would be more than one item on it, but that's not really the point, nor what I've learned. And I think on a blog written by a university student, it's important to talk about these sorts of lessons, since my life is not just made up of enjoying snowfalls, going out for coffee with girlfriends, and joyous essay-writing. (In fact, I think "joyous" and "essay-writing" don't really belong in the same sentence. I reserve the word "joy" for things like holding babies, drinking wine with a dear friend, and the first frost.) The lesson is, of course, that there's only so much Leah to go around, and Leah herself wasn't getting enough.
I told a professor I really admire that I wouldn't be able to work with her, and she wrote back to tell me that an important part of success is to know your limitations. Funny how I can tell myself that a hundred times, but hearing it from her has more weight. But when I made the decision to say "no", it added a bit more weight to my own opinion of what my priorities are. It's also funny how we can forget things that seemed so important at a time when things were more balanced: at the end of summer, before uni began, I told myself that my five classes were going to be my priority, that keeping my scholarship, learning lots of stuff, and enjoying my work by also giving myself time off from school were the most important things, and anything more than that was too much to take on. But once I got back on campus, I found I was comparing myself to a lot of other people, seeing what they did or didn't do, took on or didn't take on, and allowing those comparisons to dictate what I, consequently, should do or take on.
As I said to Mum in one of our conversations lately (she's my go-to counsellor, healer, helper) I have realized it is more of an adult thing to do to realize your limitations and make decisions based on that, than it is to take on a whole lot of stuff. Of course, everyone's got their own limit, so someone else's "manageable amount" is my "way too much" or maybe vice versa. And I think as I'm coming into my adult self, this is something I will need to keep remembering, and re-learning.
So what am I going to do about this? Well, for starters, I'm going to read back over last November because the same issues were rearing their ugly heads then, too. Nothing like a little perspective. And I'm going to make sure I get lots of sleep--so much it feels like too much, and then maybe a little more. And as this is a long weekend, I'm going to take full advantage of it, and maybe do something other than schoolwork for a good solid chunk of time (my scrapbook, and oh how painful it is to admit I have a scrapbook, needs last summer put in it, for posterity, and there is always the prose stylings of Diana Gabaldon to spend hours with).
I just wanted to put this out there in case you were feeling the same way. Are you? If not, what do you do about it?
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