I got nothing...

Or almost nothing.

Man, this has been a LONG week. I hate evening meetings. They might be okay if I didn't have to be at work until 10, and if I slept in until 8 or so. But when you've gotten up at 4:30, worked out, put in a full day of work, sandwiched in piano practice/grading/whatever else you have to do - it just feels very demoralizing to have to go OUT of the house again, more than 12 hours after you first got up.

At least next week, barring something crazy, I have no evening meetings outside of my evening class.

I notice my mood is far worse in weeks like this. I don't know if it's JUST having little free time, if it's not being able to do any craft-work, or a little of both. In the most recent Mollie Makes (At least in the UK edition, and yes, I still buy the UK edition even though there's a US edition, I'm a bit of a snob that way), they discuss how some mild mental....I'll say "difficulties," not "illness," because really, if something is impairing your day-to-day function, you need to be working with a doctor and probably either taking medication, seeing a counselor/therapist, or both. But anyway, for people with mild dysphoria, mild ocd-like tendencies, they were discussing how a study out showed that knitting (or other kinds of repetitive craft work) helped. With the knitting, it's partly the "linearity" of it - the stitches come off the left needle, they go on the right needle. And you can see your progress. And it probably sops up some of the hyperfocused attention that might go toward worrying or brooding over things.

I've said before that for me, getting out on a country road (where there's little traffic; I find driving in heavy traffic stressful) clears my mind and helps me think. Again, I think it's that those sort of lower-level attention-requiring functions (maintaining the right speed, looking out for other people, paying attention to your route, looking out for hazards) kind of occupy the hamster-wheel part of my brain that might otherwise be contemplating something someone said to me that sounded odd or worrying about what I need to do next week.

I admit, sometimes I do wonder if I have some kind of subclinical form of ocd. Oh, it doesn't interfere with my daily life; I don't do things like get up in the night to be sure I turned off the stove or things like that. But sometimes, my brain does grab onto a thought and not really let go of it. Or I catch myself doing things like repeatedly counting the students in the classroom when I am proctoring a test. Oh, I can stop myself from doing it if I notice it - I don't feel compelled to do it or like something bad is going to happen if I stop, or stop mid-count, it's just, it's like my brain gets slightly bored and it goes, "Oh, I know. Let's count something!"

I also wonder if sometimes my extreme rule-following and attention to duty is a part of this.

(I had my co-teacher last night, when we were sharing 'war stories' after class was over - I told him about my student who told me he was skipping class to go hunting and my dismay about how I sometimes even canceled stuff I was going to do for fun on my 'free time' because I felt like it was better to get grading done - and he said to me, "You take on too much stuff. You need to say no to something." Though I don't know; this is someone whose hobbies are essentially an extension of his career, and my hobbies could in no way be considered academically relevant, so. But yeah. I'd love to drop a responsibility or two but I just don't see that being able to happen any time soon, because I don't see anyone who would be willing to pick them up and they are things that can't not be done.)

But circling back around to "knitting may be necessary for my mental well-being" - I notice in weeks like this I am grumpier and unhappier and more prone to slightly lose my normal calm demeanor when dealing with the more egregious examples of student senses-of-entitlement. (I snapped slightly at someone yesterday because they seemed to be implying I needed to cancel my dental appointment this afternoon just so they could make up something that they missed the prior make-up appointment for).

Of course, there are a couple other side effects of busy weeks. I don't eat as healthfully because (a) if you have 30 minutes at home between work and meetings, you don't have time to do the whole "cook something up" routine, and (b) somehow it seems less appetizing to have to chew through a pile of vegetables when you're facing having to run out the door. (And eating takes me longer now - since I had the crowns put in I am FAR more cautious about my teeth and I chew more slowly and tentatively out of fear of breaking another tooth or "popping" a crown. And the crowns have slightly altered my bite.)

And it's hard to know which one of those things is contributing the most to my malaise: being over scheduled, or not having the chance to sit and knit and decompress, or not eating as I should eat. However, I'm unwilling to try the experiment that might present itself: take a week when you aren't over scheduled but ban yourself from knitting. Or live on a mostly-cold-cereal-and-dry-fruit diet for a week. And see how either affects mood. (And of course, factoring out the placebo effect would be impossible).

Probably I need just to make time to knit. Even if it means going to bed later. (Though getting less sleep than I need also makes me grumpy). Back when I first started the whole treating-high-blood-pressure thing, when my doctor thought it was mainly a case of me being too uptight (though I think she was wrong on that, based on the fact that my blood pressure on the medication and low-salt diet, without any other behavior modification, is pretty much what would be "normal" for a person without hypertension. I think my issue is just some unlucky accident of heredity, considering practically EVERYONE on my dad's side of the family has been on blood pressure medication at some point in time). Anyway, she floated the idea of my learning meditation or biofeedback or something like that and I remember thinking, "no, I just need more time to knit."

Of course, part of it could just be Too Many People. I'm a true introvert in the sense that being around people too much stresses me out - I can feel it. Even people I fundamentally like. I don't feel like I can relax around most people....I never feel like I'm quite being myself.

And there have been a lot of people this week - all the meetings at church, all the classes, faculty meeting, dealing with students who have problems (some problems are ones that I am genuinely happy to help out with, some, like Mr. Hunting, I'm not quite so happy about). (And this afternoon, the dentist.) It will be nice to be able to go home tonight and close the door and not interact with people for a while.