stress?

If I were to paint a picture right now, it would look something like this painting (which is called, "Anxious Moment" by an artist named AnneKarin Glass).

You know that anxious feeling of being over-booked, over-worked, and feeling like you don't quite have a handle on everything going on in your life at the moment? Yeah, that's me today.

I feel like I've got a fully loaded calendar, full of business as well as social meetings, classes I'm taking as well as time I need to allot to my new at-home job. I feel like I'm hardly keeping track of everything. I feel like my brain might possibly start leaking out some of the information I've tried to stuff into it recently. Can you see it? I have a nice mental picture of it right now.

I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling worried and overwhelmed and unsure. I'm feeling like I want to either (a) crawl under this desk, curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth whispering, "go away, go away, go away"; or (b) sell everything we have and move to a sleepy village in Mexico, where life is just a little slower.

Sounds nice, doesn't it - escaping?

But I can't. I'm a big girl. I've got to face up to these times of pressure and uncertainty and swallow the lump in my throat. I have to figure things out - take a look at my emails and calendar and organize my life a little. I've got to stop trying to do everything perfectly, since that gets me more overwhelmed. I've got to have realistic expectations for myself, and not be afraid to say that I just can't do something, that I just don't have the time, or patience, or room for that right now. I have to be honest.

So here's to a new day, as of right now. Forget starting anew tomorrow; I'm starting anew today, in this moment. I'm going to stop telling myself that I can do everything, and I'm going to stop putting things that I CAN do on hold. Here I go.