Exhausted.

I feel like I may indeed be close to the point of exhaustion. Clearly I think if I had full on actual like clinical exhaustion, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. But I'm not there yet. Even though I had been diligent about grading essays the day they came in, that is like finishing them within hours of collecting them, I am going to take a break today. What this means then is that I'll end up, the last week of classes then probably collecting essays on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but I'm willing to put that off for the sake of my sanity and health right now.

Part of the problem is that I'm not sleeping well at all. And that's just exacerbating the problem. My body is reacting to the stress right now in very weird ways. No cause for alarm, really. Everything that might be classified as out of the ordinary has one common explanation--exhaustion. Plus add this bout of anxiety and depression, and voila! There you go. And honestly, even though I've been blowing off academic and teaching work in the afternoons when I get home, when I get home, I end up spending an hour cleaning the kitchen or grocery shopping or cooking or something, so when I come home, I don't always rest like I should. What I need to do is just take a long nap. But since I haven't been sleeping well, I haven't been letting myself take naps during the afternoon because I don't want it to further disrupt sleep. But for the remainder of the quarter, I'm not going to be so stingy. And I'm just taking this weekend off.

If I get a good night's sleep tonight and feel good and rested in the morning (which may or may not be possible) then I'd like to get up, work out in the morning (I haven't been able to work out, even slightly since Tuesday), like maybe just a slow 30 minute run to do something, and then grade for an hour--just so I'm not so totally overwhelmed on Monday. Then I'd like to repeat on Sunday before getting to the g'parents' house. While I should just take the whole weekend off to rest/not grade, I know if I have the entire stack waiting on Monday, then I'm going to feel overwhelmed coming into the week, and the drafts I pick up Thursday *have* to be done by Thursday afternoon because they need to be able to start working on the final drafts in class on Friday morning.

Sheesh. This exhaustion is partly my fault. I set a crazy ass pace for this course. No wonder I'm feeling like death on a cracker my friends. But, what am I supposed to do? four essays in six weeks with revision opportunities is a lot.

And I can tell you, what will probably happen is that I will grade some this afternoon because I don't want the drafts hanging over my head. But I really want to go to the movies first this afternoon, like right after class is over. And I will. I'm dying to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as you may or may not know that I'm a HUGE fan of the book and of Seth Grahame-Smith. I waited to see Prometheus for when the husband had about 36 hours of leave time, but I told him I was going to AL:VH without him because I can't wait another week or so to see it. I *MUST* see it today friends. And while I should come home from class and nap rather than going to the movies, I'm going to go to the movies.

And probably what's going to happen, because the thought of those essays being around all weekend, is that as soon as I take the dogs out, I'm going to start working on them. I think what I needed to do was give myself permission not to do them to make myself feel better, and in doing so, I'm probably going to just bust right though them. I just don't want to have to think about them all weekend. And if I'm up and not able to work out, then I should see how many drafts I can get through before class starts. I don't really want to, but I may as well.

ETA: You know what? Now that I'm showered and have had breakfast, I feel like I'm thinking more clearly. I am going to take the day off. I thought I'd sit and grade for 70 minutes or so, teach, go to the movies, come home and grade maybe for an hour and then call it a night. But no. I'm helping a friend move tomorrow and I should clean the house tomorrow too since I didn't the last time the husband had a brief amount of time off. So no. Aside from teaching, I'm taking the day off. So I'm going to read for fun!! right now and enjoy my coffee before it's time to go teach. I have to say, I already feel a little bit better. And we're watching a movie in class today, too, so it's low impact all around. I am going to relax.