I feel like I've been hibernating lately. I think it's partly by choice, but mostly it's like an avalanche of everything I do just fell on top of me. School has been a non-stop parade of tests, quizzes, projects, presentations, care plans. Every time I check something off my to-do list, I have about fifty other tasks waiting for me. This week was the first round of papers for my 18 freshman writing advisees. So I had to fit 18 (yes, eighteen) 45 minute slots of time into my schedule. I also have my part-time job at the hospital, which keeps me busy until midnight one to two days a week. And then...stop it now...then there is the babysitting. Joshua and I have done two overnights in the suburbs in the past month, and I've been babysitting an average of 2-3 times a week. Add that to my night class, my clinicals, my internship at a senior center, and the previously mentioned job, homework and writing advising situation....

It kind of gives me palpitations to sit back and read this all in one paragraph.

I haven't even had time to have senioritis. What I have had time to do, apparently, is completely blanket my apartment in powerpoint handouts, homework, freshman papers, receipts, clothes, dishes - you name it and it is currently a) dirty b) in the wrong spot or c) dirty and in the wrong spot and I need it THISMINUTE and I can't find it. I definitely gave a presentation today wearing my black pants Formerly Known As Clean. I've had clinicals and an internship that have used and abused those pants, and frighteningly I have only one clear memory of washing them in the past 6 weeks.

I should say that I do like to be busy. I like to feel like I have accomplished something at the end of the day, I like knowing that I've learned something. I know I am guilty of complaining about being bored as equally as I complain about being busy. But I feel like the last two weeks have pushed me past busy into some other realm where I am just mechanically achieving some sort of "done-ness" in all my activities. At 11pm last night I was at work running around checking my patients' vitals, getting a new admit settled in, and trying to finish all my charting... and I actually felt overwhelming relief to still be there. Because there was nothing else to do, no homework, no household tasks, that I was responsible for until I left that unit. I felt like I was hiding from my life by being at work.

I just have to remember that at this time next year, my life will be happening AT work. And hopefully I will have enough perspective to look back at this season of life and be grateful for it being over as opposed to just complaining about the present.

Also, I hope that this somehow, someday, can be turned into a situation we joke about. Like, "remember that month where we never saw each other and we let half the food in the fridge rot because we didn't even have time to make salads and we both wore dirty clothes in socially unacceptable situations and we went broke because we went to starbucks EVERY.MORNING?" yes...the potential for humor is there...