Candy corn for breakfast

Here I am, looking into the precipice of the 4 weeks I have been dreading since the summer. Not dreading in a “walking over hot coals” way, but that dread you get when your roller coaster car starts to slow down and the time between the chain-clicks gets longer and longer right before you crest over that really huge hill and gravity takes over.

The reason I’ve been dreading this span since summer is that October-November are always insanely busy as it is. Add in an 18 hour graduating semester and all the corresponding homework and research projects, starting a new job, 2 friends’ weddings out of town (one of which I’m officiating), our annual weekend at the Renaissance Festival, and a 5k, and you pretty much have a time warp to the end of November. *whine* Essentially what this means is that all of my school- and house-work that I’d normally do on the weekends are going to be crammed into Monday through Thursday spans, as Friday through Sunday are largely going to be occupied.

 (Oh and in case it got buried in that run-on sentence of an itinerary, I got a new job! I start work at REI on Saturday. Huzzah!)

I find Hyperbole and a Half to be relevant often...

 Something that is really important to me during these times of intense stress is taking care of myself mentally. I have found through trial and error (lots of error) that if I don’t do this, even if it is at the sacrifice of other obligations, things will crumble around me. I must get sleep. That’s a big one. When I was working at a Large Coffee Chain, I was going on extreme deficits— 4 hours a night and hopefully a nap in between – and found out the hard way that my body does NOT react well to having its sleep messed with. Also, knowing myself and how I react emotionally to stress helps me prepare for and thwart attitude shake-ups that otherwise would derail my hard work.

 This ties in with my fitness goals, which are going rather well. I believe that mental fitness is extremely important to physical health. With all of the things I have going on, I can’t possibly neglect my mental health and expect my fitness goals to happen! So in addition to The Domestic Pagan’s 3rd mini challenge to analyze cravings (saallltttt), and keep taking measurements, I am going to take a more active approach to my mental health.

Why look, its relevant again.

 Things that have been successful with my plan include doing two things I wasn’t sure I’d ever do: start a food/exercise diary, and beginning the training for a 5k which I will do in November. Eek! I’ve done 2 5k training sessions so far—I plan on doing another one tomorrow (I’m loath to say that I’m “going jogging,” as so far walking happens more than jogging). Session #2 left me with much less desire to die than #1 did, and hopefully #3 will continue that trend. The food diary thing is going OK, except that it really shows how much of a “college kid” diet I’m on right now. Doing all right on nixing the diet soda, but that wasn’t a big challenge to begin with.

 So, there we are right now. Things are going well, if extremely busily, with only an acceleration on the horizon. I’m already planning the things I’m going to do after graduation, some of the first being “play Xbox,” “read for fun,” and “sew”. I can’t wait!