friends = cures for anxiety :)

As many of y'all are aware, I have been quite busy with school (both practicum and my own assignments) this year. Many of y'all are also aware that I generally find this time of year to be quite difficult -- my motivation is usually close to nonexistent, I whine a lot about having to do anything, I do not get nearly enough sleep and I generally start voicing a belief that humans should have been created as hibernating beings. Whether this is due to the lack of sunlight in the winter, the cold weather that I am very sensitive to (and living in a basement apartment that is not heated quite enough due to cost-cutting measures upstairs doesn't help much, though I fully understand and support said cost-cutting measures), the fact that I've already been inundated with way too much schoolwork since September, just some attitude problem I need to fix, or some combination of said factors, I'm not sure...but I know that I've been suffering from whatever it is in recent weeks because there have been times when the stress of how much I need to do combined with my perfectionism have led to larger than usual bouts of procrastination, an at-times-paralysing anxiety, and some pretty lackluster lesson plans.

However, I wanted to thank everyone who came out to Jen's get-together at Jack Astor's and Dairy Queen last night. I know it was Jen's get-together, but it did me a world of good. You all saw the sugar-and-readiness-for-stress-relief-induced giddiness I had at Jack's (I'm glad that most of the people who were at the table last night have seen me in other, much more level-headed contexts and thus were hopefully not too scared by said giddiness ;)) followed by what I thought was the beginning of a sugar crash a little before I left Dairy Queen. Sitting down at my computer after I got home, though, I didn't feel like I was on a sugar crash. Rather, I was struck that I actually felt a sense of sanity, clearheadedness, and calm that is unusual for me at this time of year. Practicum planning no longer seemed like such a big deal. I felt more "normal" than I have felt for a while this winter. Now, sugar alone hasn't seemed to do the trick for me in the past (I had another day this week that involved a lot of Twizzlers, cinnamon hearts, and Coke, and I think in that case all the sugar just made me more anxious). This means the cure must have been being giggly and giddy with my friends (or at the very least some combination of my friends and sugar ;)). Thanks for being there last night; it was fun times and just what I needed right about now. I've also taken a couple steps to restore my spiritual life, which is helping immensely in this area as well, but that is a whole other story...