Another Burr in My Saddle

I returned home last night after 10 hours at work, 3 hours of commuting, and another 2 hours at my part-time job to find a voicemail from the apartment company informing me that they have a showing this morning. While that is good on one hand, it is also extremely stress-inducing because I have not had a chance to clean the apartment and it is a pit of lint and stuff sitting all over the place. The showing is this morning at 9:30, and I have not been at the apartment since Tuesday because of all the things that I have to do. In addition, I am getting ready for jury duty service - something that lasts for two weeks here in my county - on top of coordinating packing and moving services, carpet cleaning, the delivery of two beds, and an upcoming visit from my Mom and my sister. Add to all that the end of the year/preholiday stress happening at work, and I am at my wit's end.

I got nothing.

You know, I am spending inordinate amounts of time in a stress response these days, and I do not like it. When I do the things that I usually do to combat stress, something comes up and shoots my response way back up again. I am basically living in a constant state of stress, and I know that this type of state is not a desirable one. I am not able to do what I want to do.

I have decided that it is worth the lack of stress to pay other people to do the things that they can do to help me out. For example, I am going to pay movers to pack up the remaining things at the apartment, and I just decided that I want to get someone to clean the apartment so I don't have to try to fit that into an already burgeoning list of tasks and appointments. If I can get someone to clean this next week, then I will be able to rest when the apartment management want to show the apartment. The carpet cleaning is already scheduled for the 23rd.

It is worth the money to get these things off my list and to make other things less stressful for me. I am house poor, but I have plenty, so there isn't much that I will be losing by paying for the services of others to do things that I cannot accomplish.

There you go.

Sorry about all the "me" themed posts lately - the "me" has taken over all of the other parts of what I like to write about here on music, therapy, and me. The music and therapy parts are going perfectly well - typical responses to me and my services all the time. So, the "me" is the area where I am most involved. It is the area of my life where things are not stable at all, so it is taking over my entire bandwidth and thought process.

I have two music therapy groups and two music therapy individual sessions today. My direct service time will be finished by 1pm today due to closed classrooms. I am hoping that my music therapy room will not be hot today, and my cabinet finally arrived yesterday. In addition, the maintenance department FINALLY replaced the rotten ceiling tiles that have been affected by an oily, rusty condensation from the HVAC system for the PAST FOUR YEARS! They did not clean up the dust or detritus from the removal process, so I will have to do that this morning before people arrive, but there are no more holes in my ceiling. I also have to figure out if the cabinet that I got was the one I wanted - the shelves look less functional than I wanted, so I am thinking that it might not be my cabinet that I got - I might have ended up with the one ordered by the other teacher who needed one. There are no locks on this cabinet, so I have to figure out what I can store in there that does not need to be locked up. A problem to solve that affects no one but me. That's a nice thing.

One of the things about "me" is that I do much better with stress that is mine and mine alone. I get sent over the stress edge into the pool of anxiety when someone else sets up something that affects me but does not talk to me about it. So, the work problem is a nice, simple problem. It is only something that I care about. Now I can finally finish up my room storage and get things arranged in ways that make sense to me. I no longer have an excuse...

So, it is time to go in to the world to see what is going to happen...