Well, so much for the year of being in balance, and so much for keeping my life in control. It's still relatively early in the school year, and I am already completely overwhelmed.

I've been up since 5am today. At one point today, I had 47 unread emails in my Inbox---and I check my email regularly. I spent maybe 10, 15 "quality" minutes with Baby Jane today, and 0 "quality" minutes with Mr. Jane.

Things were actually going along ok for a while. It's just over the past few days or week, maybe, that things have gotten out of control---like the Mack Truck of Too Much Work came barreling in out of nowhere and hit me before I saw it coming.

I guess it's not a huge surprise that things are falling apart:

• I am teaching many more students than I normally do. Now, this is a good problem to have in one's tenure year, in one respect (look at me! I'm popular!), but logistically, it's a nightmare. I have extra resources to help deal with the sheer numbers, but there's only so much that these resources can do to help out.


• Hello, tenure year! Stress!! Everything seems like big stakes now: how soon to send that paper out so that it can hopefully be published before the packet is due, how that class the other day went, should I speak up or keep quiet on that controversial topic in our department meeting, etc. Even random social interactions with colleagues are a bit strained. ("Hey! How's it going! [Oh-my-god-this-person-is-judging-me-as-we-speak! Panicpanicpanic!]"


• Speaking of tenure, I find myself pretty torn between what I should be doing to earn tenure at my current institution and what will make me marketable should I not get tenure here. There is overlap, of course, but these things don't always match up, and then I have to decide how to best spend my energies.

I am doing some things right, I suppose: I'm being brutal about what I'm taking on (pretty much, nothing except the essentials), I'm saying no a lot, I'm letting go of perfection (or at least limiting the time I allow myself to spend on certain tasks, e.g. teaching prep), and I'm finding time almost every day to exercise (totally necessary for my mental health). But it's still too much for me to handle, at least for now, at least this week.

So I guess I'll just keep plugging away and hope that this passes (please!), and try as best I can to get everything back into, if not true balance, then at least a better balance.