Needing to strengthen myself up

Sometimes I really need to write a blog entry to get myself moving into action, to cheer myself on, and to check in with myself about what is going on.

of course, after reading a series of entries written by a friend of mine who lived through the New Zealand earthquake and is dealing with the loss of her home, this all seems like selfish blather. 🙁 I dont know what to do about the sadness I feel for her and her family, and it runs through my mind a whole lot.

Grad school is a challenge for me. On a lot of levels.

In part because I am balancing a ton of stuff right now.

New marriage.

All I want to do is be with K. I want to talk to him, watch tv with him, go for walks with him, spend time with him. I hate having to do homework when he is home (and gosh it would help if I did homework beforehand!)

Must do’s.

There’s loads of stuff I have to do. We finally filled out the social security paperwork telling them that we have fewer resources since we made a big payment on student loans, hoping they will reinstate my SSI checks, which would help us out a lot.

I need to call the phone company and say no thank you to your new $1 a month charge for long distance, I dont want to pay for something I dont use.

financial aid paperwork must be done – the student loan contacted me and said they are now adding interest to my loan since I just took one class last semester. holy crap. I am so irritated by that, now I have to do a whole lot of paperwork and phone calls to straighten that out, to establish that I am still a student, that my loan should not be due until I graduate, and that there should be no interest added. and hopefully I win that. In the meantime, I’ve paid $600 this month on the loan to reduce the principle down to $3400. though they screwed up and deducted $51 in interest, damnit. so I need to call them again and ask why they added interest when I had the loan guy on the phone clear up the interest charges. there should be no interest.

it makes no sense: I only took financial aid for one semester, and have been paying for everything since then, so I thought one semester of just 1 class would be fine since I paid for it. it wasnt a financial aid semester. meanwhile, the school financial aid office made me fill out paperwork about all this too, because I didnt take 2 classes last semester. and financial aid requires at least 5 units. but I didnt take financial aid for the fall semester, I paid for it myself, and my department requires just one class per semester minimum. so I wrote them a very clear letter explaining all this, and filling out their stupid forms, and such.

now I’ve got student loan forms to say all the same thing all over again. and I have to have my financial aid department at my school to fill something out, too. only this scares me, if the loan people decide I didnt do enough school last semester, they might just decide to charge me interest (something I was trying to avoid) even though I am currently over their minimum level of classes.

I have to fight the urge to just get overwhelmed and cry and hide from it all. I have to somehow buck up and get myself to jump through all these hoops no matter how I feel about them.

Work.

I work 3 jobs each week, sometimes/often an extra babysitting job adds a 4th job. The work alone is a big balancing act. It takes a bit more energy to have to remember what day it is, which means which job it is, and what my schedule is today. It’s never the same. There have been studies on jobs and workers, and when work keeps changing like this, it has been shown to be more stressful and take more energy.

At least realizing this helps me understand it. and I try to allow for it and to be patient with myself.

Plus it is 2 new jobs, so I am naturally far more exhausted than I would be with a consistent job. But I have to remind myself I’m in that first couple weeks of new jobs, so it is more stressful trying to figure out the basics each day at work. I’ve got 2 babysitting jobs this week with a brand new family I have yet to meet, so that’s a new stress, albeit work and income I can use, so that’s great. These arent complaints, just acknowledgements of what is going on that makes me so tired.

It does have its benefits to have work changing a lot. One day it’s a baby screaming a lot because she’s tired, the next it’s a 5 year old giving surly looks at me because she doesnt like a new person in charge. The challenges dont get tedious because they stay fresh. 🙂

It’s also helpful because I keep it in perspective. It’s just a day, it’s just a coworker at the gym acting stupid. tomorrow I wont have to deal with them, so I dont get too upset over it and try to fix it too much. I shrug it off a lot easier.

Meanwhile, in my time off, I am supposed to be doing schoolwork.

Like right now.

But I thought writing a blog entry would help motivate me, as it’s very hard to get anything done and I get discouraged and pissy when I try to do homework.

In fact, the real challenge is getting myself to start doing any action. and the more I put it off, the more deadlines loom, the more guilt I feel, the more stress I feel, and the crappier my level of effort is on homework.

I feel a bit like I’m doing a half-assed job. and I’m a bit stunned by fellow students sometimes, who seem to understand the assignment better than I do, and who get all upset about having to wait until late Monday night for assignments to be posted, when I wait until later in the week to bother looking at the current assignment.

Part of that is style, and scheduling, I am sure. I’m not a total nerd, and I’m pretty good at school stuff. and who cares what anyone else does, really? who cares if they are just doing school or working too, or whatever else is going on in their lives.

ultimately, I have fear at the heart of it all. Fear that I cant do it, that has to be answered.

I do remind myself that I always do a good job, that once I get started, I actually feel better and I even enjoy the work itself. Why do I forget that so easily?

I remind myself often that I have already proven to myself that I can do a good job, that I am a good student, and that I am quite capable of this work. I show myself evidence: I got a BA degree at fancy university, after all. I earned that with a lot of hard work, and I did just fine with my semi-slacker style. (besides, style is all relative. some friends would say I am not a slacker at all, and that I should relax a bit more).

School is about jumping through hoops, demonstrating my capabilities, and I learned a lot about hoop jumping already. this is worth jumping through hoops, it gives me a profession that gives me a professional job once I am done. this also leads to paid internships and such.

All I need to do is get to work. Just jumping through hoops. Getting the assignments done, acknowledging my work to myself and feeling effective will help a lot to reduce stress.

And not letting myself get distracted. hooboy.

I’m not sure how to do that. distractions have been derailing me the past couple days.

Dear Kirstin,

please just get some progress done so you can feel better. You wont start feeling better until you do.

please dont get so easily discouraged, this education is teaching you how to func