Note to Self


While I was sitting in class today simultaneously taking notes on the lecture, answering e-mails for my internship, and organizing my notes for an event on Friday, panic blew up like a fifth grader huffing into a wad of double bubble in my stomach. It was accompanied by the ever familiar feeling of a pulled plug in my mouth, drying it out like the mojave desert.

I've been having a lot of these physical manifestations of nerves and panic lately. It never really happened to me until I was well into adult-hood, and then it was rarely. Recently it's been worse. Maybe because I'm nearing the end of a lot of years of schooling and finally feeling at peace with my calling. Maybe it's because I've matured enough (unlikely) to see the consequences of my failings. Maybe I am developing a panic disorder. Maybe it's a new symptom of my ADHD. Maybe it's a parent thing (oy vey the world we live in!)

I am also really really terrible at self-care. So today, when I stared at 10 fresh e-mails on top of other unread e-mails in my inbox while we went over a paper due the following week in class that I know I don't actually have time to do and thought about my husband I'm basically neglecting, and my child I feel I barely spend time with that bubble of panic swelled and swelled and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I got dizzy and nauseous and post-class had to make a break for it.

Leaning over that toilet and still seeing a few stars, I gathered my thoughts a little. I knew a lot of what I couldn't do to rectify this recent bout of strange bodily activity...i.e. I couldn't actually cut back on anything. All of these things I HAD to do. Because they all mattered. When people tell me to slow down and I give them an indignant look it's not because I supposedly worship being busy and want to feel this way, it's because I live in a culture and a climate and a country that demands it (a rant for another time). I am not celebrating my own busyness. I wish I wasn't spinning all of these plates and had time to do the things and be with the people I love for the amount of time I want.

So in that star-spangled moment over the toilet, I realized at least a smidgen of what I could do.

I sat down in the cafeteria and pulled up Microsoft Word and wrote myself a quick memo:






This is hanging above my desk that is currently unusable because of all the things I have on it that need sorted and done and organized.

Well, it's a start.

And maybe you need this memo too.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Complicated.

For better or for worse I finished seminary today.  And, true confessions, right now I'm not feeling very good about it. Not in the "Oh, I'll really miss all of this" but more like "Why did I do that?" "What was I thinking when I thought I was called to this?" "Next time I say I really feel called to something, someone smack me upside the head." I'm leaving seminary at this moment with some pretty chronic imposter syndrome. By the time I realized I was not a good fit for seminary, or at least this seminary, it was too late. I'd invested too deeply. My relationship with it is also mired and muddled in the complicated feelings of really caring for some of the other parts of my life and people, and things I have done during that time. It's tangled in the notion that I am a totally different person because of every struggle and frustration and how those same things simultaneously made me feel sad and lonely. I don't th
Read more

Why I Love Jesus but Hate Seminary

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” -- Mahatma Ghandi  Because ministry is a competition Who can have the craziest, busiest life? Who can have children? Who can get married the fastest? Who gets the call first? Who passes all the ordination exams, has the most life experience, ministry experience, is the least sinful?  Seminary is a lot of "nananana boo boo I'm better and more equipped for this than you are!"  Someone in one of my classes told a group of students, at least three of us under 30, that she prays for the young people essentially because we don’t have the experience of ministry that she does and that we aren’t equipped with enough life experience to do the job right. I held up my end of the bargain as a sassy young person by rolling my eyes. At the same time this attitude that young people are ill-equipped to do the amazing things that ministry requires and be leaders in the chur
Read more

I Don't Know

Dear God, I don't know if you are there, but these last few weeks have not gone well. A week and a half ago I made a momentary poor choice that destroyed my not very old and very expensive laptop. Two days after I did that, I was nervous and upset and scratched the bumper of my brand new car backing out of a parking space. A few days after that I learned a medical test did not come back with good results and I had to start taking a higher dose of medication and add a second one. Today the passenger side mirror on that brand new the car I just made the very first payment on was shattered. Tonight my mouth is vacillating between medicated tingling and throbbing nerve pain from dental work I have finally have the insurance and money and time to have done. I feel like I'm watching the money I make every day float out of my bank account before I even see it, and there's some difficult transitions at work, and I have had a lingering cough for a few weeks that is making it harde
Read more