Getting real

The other day I received a sample back from an editor, and loved what she had to say. I loved it so much, in fact, that I booked her to edit my whole project. All day I was bouncing off the walls, so very, very excited.

Except then I got home, and sat down to compare her changes, I realized that I wanted to start this editing process all over again from page one. I have less than a month to go through it, and polish it as pretty as it's going to get, before she sees it.

What have I done?

And did I mention I'm trying to graduate in the next two weeks? That definitely doesn't add any pressure. I need to squeeze in some hours at work, too, while I'm at it. Noooo prooooblem!

I do this to myself, and I can't understand why. I set myself up with a bunch of individual expectations, which, taken on their own, are very reasonable. Sure, I can graduate...how hard can it be? I'm only taking two real classes this semester anyway. Oh, write a book? Well that shouldn't be too bad either. I mean, just those two classes right? I've had it rolling around in my head for a couple years now. How hard can it be?

Well, it's not hard, unless I've forgotten that there's only 24 hours in a day, and I am only one person.

I start graduate school this summer. Unlike much of the rest of the college going population, I am too old to just take the summer off and graduate later. I'm going to have a son looking at college in five years. I really can't be still playing this game when he gets going. So, I'm starting an intensive business core, with a two hour commute the first week of June. There's not going to be time for much besides this for the summer. I'm going to be lucky if I can take my editors work, and have a finished product before fall.

Intensive semesters are not new to me. When I went back to school, I did a year of Arabic in one semester, and it was brutal. I've had 16+ credit loads most of the time since then. Last semester, I spent the time in the great country of Jordan, trying to get half way fluent in Arabic. Stress is not new to me.

So I'm back to having to finish this main edit by the end of May.

I say this to remind myself that I always manage to come through. This is intense, but doable.

I got this.