The first day of Penguicon was fantastic. I spent the entire day having fascinating conversations with amazing people. Then I climbed into bed and my brain kept running for an hour, trying to sort everything. Just as I drifted off to sleep I snapped awake with an overload of mommy guilt. It only lasted for a few minutes, but during those minutes I was shaky and almost in tears. It was focused on being away from the kids, but it was really the result of too much input and not enough down time.
I was similarly shaky at the end of the convention. We were all packed and sitting at the restaurant, waiting for time to depart to the airport. A very perceptive friend asked if I was okay. I wasn’t really. I was holding on to calm and repressing the person in the back of my brain who wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Again it was the result of too much input and too little processing time. But I did not want to miss even a moment of visiting with friends whom I see far too seldom.
Last night I snapped awake at 1 am in a panic because I have not yet shipped things to GenCon. I have three months until GenCon. There is plenty of time to ship books there. But it took me several minutes to claw my way in to sufficient consciousness to remember that fact. The real problem is that I have an overload of things to do and most of them are both urgent and important. So instead of taking a couple of days to unpack and re-organize after Penguicon, I am trying to dive straight into all of the things to do. So far it is not working well. I’m getting things done, but it is all stressy and fragmented. If I can get myself focused I can dig out from under. But it is hard to become focused with so much looming.
The result is a latent anxiety waiting to pounce upon me. It is stress manifesting as fear. Fretting out all the details of what will happen if I fail is not nearly so useful as just getting stuff done so that I won’t fail. Also, the thinking in circles is made of unhelpful.
The good news is that my head is getting steadily clearer. I’m actually being able to blog some of the Penguicon stuff to get it out of my head. The luggage has been unpacked and stowed. I’m starting to wrap my head around the at home things. As I do, the anxiety subsides and I see that I really can do this.