Baby Steps

The longer I didn't write here, the harder it became to write here. I kept feeling like it wasn't enough just to put up a post. I needed, I thought, to fill you (if there are any yous left out there) in on everything you'd missed. I had this problem with paper diaries too. While I was home during Christmas break I found my junior high school diary (hilarious!). There would be a flurry of entries, then a long break, then a big catch up entry, then a few more daily entries, then a gap, etc. I think my problem was that I regarded the diary as some sort of historical record, rather than an outlet for pre-teen angst and overblown prose. Although I still managed to get plenty of angst in there.

And so, I'm going to do my best not to bore you with the details of my life since mid-September. In the words of Flylady, I'm just going to start where I am. Which is, at the moment, trying to blog while dissuading the cat from unrolling all my yarn.

I've overcommitted myself again this semester, and while I think I can pull it all off, I'm going to be crazy busy again. I really need to work on saying no. The problem is that everything sounded like such a good opportunity, I didn't feel like I ought to say no.
This semester, I'm:
Working
Serving as a TA
Helping organize and then going on a class trip to Spain for the class I'm TA-ing
Turning in my dissertation proposal
Writing a book chapter
Giving a paper at a conference

Typing all that out just made me feel slightly ill. Yikes. It's a lot to do. I'm trying to break it all out into manageable chunks. Maybe that will help. I've always liked the "baby steps" theory of self-help as espoused in one of my favorite movies (What About Bob?). It worked for Bob, maybe it will work for me.* Hopefully I will not have to move on to "death therapy.

In the meantime, I'm knitting to maintain my sanity. I carry a sock in progress in my bookbag and have been trying to get a few rounds in each day at lunch. It's surprisingly helpful. (In a related note, I'm trying hard not to eat lunch at my desk. The simple act of going up a few floors to the student lounge to eat really seems to make a difference in my afternoon attitude.) I've also decided to "finish or frog" all my current works in progress. It's a goal I've had before, without much success, but I feel a little more optimistic about it this time 'round. We shall see, I guess.

*You know, when that movie came out, I was young enough to be completely on Bob's side in that movie. Now that I'm older, while I still love Bob, I have great sympathy for Richard Dreyfuss's character. Poor guy.