Let the Panic Resume

I have been maintaining what many would call a ridiculous pace for an entire year: full-time PhD student, working 3 part time jobs, helping out with family stuff (particularly getting grandma to doctor appointments) as I'm able, providing pulpit supply here and there on occasion, helping out at church as I'm able. . .well, you're getting the picture.

This summer the stuff I was doing shifted a bit but the pace remained unrelenting: June was SPSS Hell, half of June and all of July was covering for Jen as she took a six week sabbatical at Holden, two of the four weeks of July were awesomesauce fun but still very busy hosting company from PA, all while still working for LPI and the library.

Then, finally, August. Glorious, glorious August, with very little on my calendar, only LPI and the library to worry about for work, and my Happy Place promising to appear, as it always does, at the end of the month.

I have been relishing August. Relishing the cooler, less humid weather. Relishing the much needed mental break. Relishing the difference between this August and last August, ever mindful and grateful for what I am NOT doing this month - unpacking all my crap and cramming for entrance exams.

Then today I met with Mary to plan the independent study we'll be doing together this fall. We are going to be reading and discussing some really cool stuff on narrative, communal faith formation, and religious education - I am actually quite stoked about it. But I was also a little anxious as I left her office, just remembering how frantic last fall was, and realizing it's all going to start up again in a short couple of weeks.

Then I went to grab some lunch in the cafeteria and Dr. Luedke joined me at the table. He was asking about what I'd filled my summer with once I finished crunching numbers for him, and was wondering about what courses I'm taking this coming fall, pushing me to think about how I could use them to help refine my thesis question and my field research design. I told him about the Sunday school curriculum I'm working on and how I've been thinking that might be a good beta test of a potential action research project. He agreed and suggested I throw together a baseline survey if for nothing else than the practice of writing the survey and testing whether what I think I'm doing is what I'm actually doing. Truly, it was a really good and helpful conversation, but I left lunch with my anxiety turned up just a little higher thinking about incorporating everything we talked about into the coming months.

Then I went to Babylon to visit the bookstore in its current exile. They really culled their collection to help with the move and lack of storage during the exile, so I figured they would have to order half the books Mary and I had just decided upon (my assumption was correct). And as long as I was there I asked "Hey, has Keifert given you a booklist for Theological Hermeneutics yet?" (this would be the other class I'm taking this fall) And they were all like "Yup, here it is."

I seriously almost had a panic attack right there in the middle of the bookstore. It's all really good stuff, authors I am excited to read and discuss, but holy crap is it a long list full of heady thinkers. I went and grabbed all that were in stock and the clerk checking me out was like, "Ooh, you might want to start reading some of these now." Thanks dude, I know.

I keep trying to take deep breaths and remind myself it's going to be better this fall. I won't have the busywork that I was dealing with for one of the classes last year, and I'll only be working two jobs, not three. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deeeeep breaths.


. . .I think I'm gonna go start reading now, bye.