Overwhelmed

There's a meme that I see on Facebook every few months that says something to the effect of, "Being an adult means saying to yourself, 'All I have to do is get through this week then everything will be smooth sailing' every week until you die", and that's how I've been feeling so far this week.  The funny thing is, this week isn't any different from other weeks.  In fact, it could be considered somewhat easier than last week because instead of having an 8-10 page paper to write, on top of balancing grading papers and a personal life, all I had to do was read a book and write a discussion reply for grad school and grade some papers.  It sounds easy, right?  Well, it should be.  Instead, I've felt completely overwhelmed, not to mention unmotivated.  I've gotten into this really bad habit of not wanting to do any work when I get home from school, which means I'm trying to cram all my grad school work and all my teaching work into the few short hours I'm at school every day.  I really need to break that habit, but it's far easier said than done.  You see, I still live with my parents in their basement, and there's no real space for me to do work down there.  I don't have a desk or anything  I know I can work at the kitchen table, but then I get easily distracted by my parents, who spend most of their time in the family room.  I could also use the craft room upstairs (I unofficially claimed the old den as my craft room), but it literally looks like Michaels, Hobby Lobby AND Joanns Fabric all threw up in there at the same time.  I've attempted to clean up in there so many times, but it's an insanely overwhelming task.  I also need to start purging old scrapbooking supplies I know I'm not going to use, but that's a whole other discussion for another day.

There has been one beautiful reprieve this week.  I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but thank God for standardized testing.  My students were taking this progress checks of sorts this morning, which meant three hours of testing.  While they tested (and I babysat them), I got so much grading done!  Between that and the fact that my discussion post was due last night, I feel such a huge weight off my shoulders.  I know I didn't do very well on the discussion post, but I can live with a mediocre grade every once in a while.  I just couldn't get into the book.  It was about Stuart history, but it was so incredibly dry!  Than goodness I'm mostly done with this book now and only have to use it for my paper for this section in a few weeks.  With any luck, I'll be able to rely on the other books for this section and won't have to use that book too much.  One can dream.

I know in the grand scheme of things this week isn't that bad, and I am feeling a lot better about it today.  The good news is it's Thursday, I only have 20 minute classes today, and my students are writing an essay tomorrow.  This week is going to sail by.  Oh, but if my students are writing essays, that means I'm going to have to grade them.  Oh boy!