dealing

Maybe this is a problem.

Several days have passed, I've had at least one good marathon twelve-hour night's sleep, and yet I'm still all in a knot over school. I noticed last night, to my dismay, that I've nearly exhausted the bottle of grappa my grandmother gave me back in the spring. I haven't yet gone for the Xanax, but am bothered by the fact that I've started to think about doing so.

My to-do lists are spawning like rabbits. My husband, who's never had time to do any of these things, is learning the hard way that he can no longer say "So, can you take care of this?" I can't. I can no longer keep my house in order, it seems. There is so much mail on the kitchen table, and the mere thought of going through it all is exhausting. We're meeting a new tax accountant on Monday morning, and while I understand that this is a courtesy, that they're taking time out to meet us and reassure us that we're doing a good thing by choosing their firm...I just don't have time for it.

My school, not otherwise known for its wealth of extracurricular activities that aren't somehow related to the study of law, has just announced that there's an Aikido club meeting on Tuesday evenings. Free lessons in a martial art I've frequently thought it would be fun to learn...but I can't go. The lessons don't end until 7:45, which means I'd miss the 8:00 train and wouldn't get home until 10:30, which must remain my bedtime if I'm to preserve any presence of mind.

"You can't do everything," says my husband, wisely, truthfully, and unhelpfully. I guess what bothers me is how little it seems I can do these days. Reading for class is no worse than jogging on a treadmill; so long as I keep my pace up, I've got it under control. But -- as if I needed more help remembering the definitions of tortious intent or malice aforethought -- El-Dubyar is singlehandedly monopolizing my schedule, clogging my precious few free hours with insubstantial, duplicative tasks that could (and will) easily be minimized by available technology. When it was just a matter of reading, briefing, going to class and assimilating actual material, I was in control. But now I've got to account for an extra dozen hours a week in the library, engaging in tasks that are such a flagrant and gratuitous waste of my time that I come away from it feeling personally insulted.

I know it's not personal. I know that nobody in the registrar's office said "Oh, that one's a commuter, so give her the extra-awful El-Dubyar assigments so she'll never have time to come up for air." All 400+ of us in the first-year class are stuck wasting the same amount of time on the same activities, whether we commute two blocks or fifty miles. I just can't help but think that if the commute were two blocks, if I weren't spending so much time on trains and had even an extra half hour just to sit down with a cup of herbal tea and read a magazine or some blogs, life would suck a great deal less.

"It's remarkable," I griped this morning to S., "how little control I'm realizing I have over my life at this point."

"You know," she replied, "you're going to have to watch that you don't burn out on this."

"What's worse," I complain to my husband, "is that it's not even the difficult stuff that's giving me trouble."

"That's a good thing," he replied, wisely, truthfully, and unhelpfully.

I wish I could buy time, go back a few months and just carve out several blocks of hours and insert them into my current life...

thus spake /jca @ September 14, 2002 07:39 PM