Overwhelmed

Do you ever feel overwhelmed? I think I thought I felt overwhelmed before I had Lily. I had no idea. Don't get me wrong. I love her. I love being her mom. I love Josh, I love being his wife. I love my job, I love my friends, I love my family, I love my house. I have lots of things that I love, but all of those things also bring with them responsibilities.

Last night I hit a wall. I felt very overwhelmed by all of my responsibilities. The thought of having one more little thing to do was just too much. The last two weeks have been incredibly stressful at work. With testing, remediation, and retesting, I feel like I've spent two weeks torturing seventh graders. That is a responsibility I don't want and don't like, but I still have to do it. There have been a ton of details to work out and very limited time to do it. It has been perhaps the most stressful week of my professional life to date. Because it was so stressful, I came home exhausted. I played with Lily and took care of her, but had little energy for anything else. Thus, my other responsibilities suffered.

I just feel like I have so many responsibilities that I'm doing a crappy job of all of them. Last night, out of shear frustration, I decided to make a list. I made a list of all of my responsibilities. The ones that I do every day, the ones I do once a week, and the ones I do every now and then. I'm not sure why I made the list. Maybe because naming a thing makes it easier to deal with. Maybe so I could show it to people and they would understand all I feel responsible for (which I did). Maybe so I would hopefully find things I can cross of that I'm not really responsible for (which I didn't). I'm not sure if the list was helpful.

My only solace is that I only have ten more days of work and then all of the stress and responsibility related to that are gone. Suddenly I'll have eight more hours a day to take care of my other responsibilities. June 11th can't get here soon enough. I just pray I make it!