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One (or Two or Ten) Too Many

Normally this is how I roll.  I can spin multiple plates at once and I do it well.  I love high stress and emergency situations.  I love to have a ton going on.  I love that I'm good at spinning many plates at once.
However, I am feeling a little more like this these days.  I crawled into bed the other night and told Andy that I felt like I had one too many things going on and he couldn't even believe that those words came out of my mouth.  Me neither!

I'm a tad overwhelmed with all I have going on!  I have my jobs (yes, plural), my kids (5) and their schools (3) and their activities (5--we only let them do one activity per "season"--thank goodness), my husband, my Masters. . . .  And then on top of those biggies, I have tons of emotional stuff going on and that alone seems like several dozen plates all by itself.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, sometimes I feel exhausted (mentally and emotionally), sometimes I feel like nothing is going to get finished, sometimes I feel like I need to just finish one thing well and forget about the rest, sometimes I want to just quit it all and occasionally I feel like I'll manage just fine.  But lately I just feel behind and that everything I am doing is a knee jerk.  I'm too busy to even plan ahead and too busy to follow that plan were I able to plan ahead.

Andy asked me (during a teary moment the other day), "when do you take time for yourself?"  And my answer was that on Mondays (during the school year), I try not to go to work so that I can do all of the laundry and clean the house.  He laughed and told me that doing the laundry and cleaning the house wasn't exactly the "time for yourself" he was meaning (especially since neither one of those tasks bring me joy).  I don't know.  When do I have time to take time?  I think that was the answer in my head while I allowed the tears to stream silently down my face.

I just need a better plan.  School (my school) is much more time consuming this year and in the last 12 months I have acquired several page additions to my job description at work and I have all of this emotional stuff boiling to the surface all of a sudden and I'm stuck or something--stuck doesn't seem to be the right word.

I'm not sure why I'm blogging. . . maybe because I don't want to write one of my five papers that is due this week or maybe because I am putting off finishing all of the accounting work I have to do for camp or maybe because I am procrastinating writing the three syllabi and course descriptions for the gap year classes I am teaching next week or maybe because. . . who knows!??!

All of this to say, right now I don't feel like a beautiful and graceful acrobat of China spinning dozens of plates with a smile on my face and a perfectly placed bun on my head while doing the splits on my friend.  Right now I feel like the frazzled mom above (she has to be a mom, right?) who is spinning and dropping and yet still spinning the plates left to be spun with messy hair, no make up and a smile on her face so that her kids don't know she's totally loosing it!

I'm a wreck.  Oh my!  There it is.  I. Am. A. Wreck.

Thankfully, my husband listened to me through my tears.  He heard what I was saying. . . better than that, he heard what I was trying to say.  And he is being so good and supportive and encouraging.  And I said all of this several days ago and he is still engaging with the wreck that I am--he hasn't forgotten that I am feeling this way.  I'm thankful--so very thankful--for his love and support.  I'm blessed.

So, if you hear a loud crash, it is probably just another plate being dropped by me.  No worries!

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