Exhausted/Exhilarated

I had a really interesting day yesterday. Partly, because it was so busy and involved lots of driving in circles searching for parking spots, trekking around campus in 95-degree weather, and being flustered. But, everything worked out according to plan.

7:00am - Wake up, drink coffee.
7:15am - Walk to gym, bike for XX minutes, walk home.
8:00am - Shower, eat breakfast, get dressed, guzzle more coffee.
9:00am - Drive to campus transportation office to pick up parking pass.
10:00am - Tutoring on campus.
11:00am - Pick up sandwich for lunch, walk to Grad Program Building to print resumes, scarf down sandwich, try to make myself presentable.
12:00pm - Mingle awkwardly at job fair; shove resumes at people.
1:00pm - Drive to Other Campus for work.
2:30pm - Leave work, drive back to Main Campus for a meeting with a professor.
3:30pm - Back to my office on Other Campus for more work.
3:35pm - Realize I have a CRIPPLING headache. Buy a cup of coffee from the vending machine, guzzle, still have headache, realize I left my Excedrin at home, curse.
6:30pm - Drive home, collapse.
8:30pm - Wake up, discover I have nothing for dinner, curse some more, make a pb&j, wonder when I will become a grown-up and start cooking grown-up food.
10:30pm - Try to finish my reading for class tomorrow...instead, end up taking a little pre-bedtime snooze on the couch.
12:00am - Bedtime for real.

Days like these usually stress me out beyond belief because of so many moving parts and so many possibilities for error/lateness/etc., but I actually had a GREAT day. I think I got myself a good work-study position (in addition to my current, non-work study job) doing research with a youngish but super  smart, enthusiastic professor. In my short experience in graduate school, I have learned that tenure-track faculty are excellent employers because they want to publish as much as possible—and need help doing it. Which means, there are lots of opportunities to get your name on one of their papers.

But the real reason things went so smoothly is because I was essentially pain-free. It was amazing—I've been feeling better the past week or so, which makes sense because I always feel better for a few days before my period and then usually the first couple days of my period, but I always have some pain. But seriously yesterday, the majority of the time I felt completely fine. It was the last day of my period too, so it seems like the good phases are lasting longer and longer each month.

You'd think I could just enjoy it and be thrilled and grateful, right? No...instead, I panicked. It just seemed too good to be true, you know? I started dreading the inevitable moment when things would go downhill again and all my hopes would be totally dashed. After I got home, I spent the evening worrying about how my brain would cope with the disappointment. Because that's basically what happened last month, and clearly I did not handle it well.

Anyways, I'm trying really hard to stay optimistic and just be grateful that I've had a string of good days—a longer string than usual, which can only be an encouraging sign long-term. And maybe the best part is that I am finally getting really excited about school and work and the future. It's been a while since I let myself feel that way, and it makes such a difference in how I see the world around me.