The door in the wall

For the past month or so, I've really felt like I kind of hit a wall with my job, progress wise. Lots of things that need to get done, lots of urgency, but nothing is really happening. I'm working more and more (and now from home when I should be relaxing), but not seeing a lot of results. I even feel that I've stalled on the gigantic learning curve I'm on with alumni affairs. Don't get me wrong, I love where I am, what I do, and who I'm doing it with. But recently, it's felt like I'm trying to get through a solid wall by hitting my head against it from two inches away.

Because my job is oftentimes the biggest thing going on in my life, how things are at work affect everything else. It took me a full 24 hours to loosen up on my vacation this past weekend, so I was no longer thinking about work every 5 seconds. When things are going well and I'm confident that I'm doing a good job, I don't worry so much. But that's just it -- recently, I'm worried that I'm not doing a good enough job. I have (probably unrealistically) high expectations for myself, and when I'm not meeting them the only solution is to work even harder. When doing that produces results, I can ease up a bit. When it doesn't, I turn into the delightful ball of nerves and stress I've been recently.

But this morning, a bunch of things happened that sort of brought me back down to earth and made me realize that I think I need to go easier on myself. My goals and objectives that I had to edit eight times got rave reviews from the head of fundraising at the Med School. The president of the Alumni Association praised me on a conference call for all my hard work. On the same conference call, my boss echoed her sentiments. One of my biggest stressors, the choosing of the Distinguished Alumna Award recipient, was taken care of in a 30 minute conference call largely due to the comprehensive packet and evaluation sheet I sent to everyone (getting everything together was a three week affair). I'm ahead of the game on many of the items on my to-do list. And the Dean came by and complimented me on my goals and objectives, and the fundraising memo I spent nearly two weeks writing and rewriting.

This whole thing has made me realize I need to learn how to handle stress better. I handled the stress of school, and my job at Beloit pretty well. However, this job is more involved and much harder than my last one, and that stress is compounded by the fact that I actually care about where I work and what I do. That's kind of a first for me, and it's because I care that everything I do has so much more weight. I'm already starting to get dizzy from looking at my goals and objectives for next year, and that's not a good sign. I'm going to take some time and map everything out on a calendar to try and simplify everything, and hopefully that will help.

As summer continues and reunion approaches, I'm sure I'll get stressed again. I just need to find a way to not let it affect everything else I do. I mean, when I can't even let go during yoga, there's a problem. And I can't have that.