Right now, I feel like I have all these plates spinning in the air. I have coordinated the details of where the plates rest, how fast they spin, the design on each plate, etc. I have a rhythm to my plates and it is working for me.
Sometimes, however, people come along and they touch a plate. Or they change the design on a plate, throwing it off its spin. Or they add plates I didn’t plan for. Or they want to tell me how to spin my plates. Or they want to make me spin my plates a way they’d like better, even though they’re MY PLATES.
“STOP TOUCHING MY DAMN PLATES!”
Okay, I feel a bit better now.
I am almost to the mid-point of this very challenging year. Well, actually, not quite. I’m 12 days from the actual mid-point. I have 194 days (plus a few hours) until graduation. Half of a year is 182.5, so I’m not quite there. But I am close. And since this insanity started, I have been telling myself a few things…
- I can do anything for a year.
- This is worth the chaos, workload, and stress.
- I am making such a huge change to the trajectory of my life and my family’s life.
- I can do this.
Today I had to rearrange plans repeatedly throughout my day. Even after that, plans still didn’t go the way *I* needed them to. So I had to rearrange some more. That has spilled on to rearranging tomorrow’s plans. Each little bump adds to my stress. Each time, I take a deep breath and try very hard to roll with it. The key word in that last sentence is “try.”
To be honest, right now, I am not doing very well on the ‘roll with it’ part. I am not breathing deeply. I am not sashay-ing my way through the day. Right now I am sitting in my recliner and having a good old fashioned cry. I am letting the stress of today go and once that is done, I will be able to try again tomorrow.
In spite of how vulnerable it is to share this, I just felt I needed to be honest about what’s going on with me. And if you happen to see anyone touching one of my plates, tell them to knock it off, okay?
