I lay in bed for a while this morning and just let myself feel the chaos of craziness that I'm feeling right now about all of the things that I have to do in this next week.  It felt kind of like an internal tornado.  When I tried to focus on it, I felt like my mind's eye was a camera and the stuff I have to do were pieces of paper being swirled around in a whirlwind.  I couldn't see any one specific thing at a time, but sometimes one piece would come into focus and then whirl by to fast for me to grab at it. 

Since this was the image that I had and it felt like internal chaos, I did a visualization exercise whereby I divided the central hallway of my brain into 4 doors: dissertation, teaching, other work responsibilities, and personal.  Then, I  visualized that all of the flying paper fell to the ground as though the wind was gone.  Then the wind blew each of the doors open, one at a time, and blew each set of papers that belonged to each issue into the right door.  Then I visualized closing the doors.  

Sounds crazy and a bit psychobable fruity, I know, but it really helped calm the internal chaos. 

It also helped me to decide that what I need to do this morning while I've got this time is to make some separate to-do lists for each of these issues.  So maybe if I write these things down I will be able to make the chaos feel more manageable.  

Plus I'll get some time today to work on finishing up the Congressional debates.   Uh, horay? 

Happy Saturday folks!