Memo to self: breathe deeper

It's got to the time of year when I'm starting to get all panicky.

• Classes start next week (although I don't start teaching until the week after). Oh, and ScaryLecturer has cleverly managed to schedule one of my classes for the one time in the week when I told him I couldn't do it.
• I have to start lining up seminars for our department seminar series, which I mysteriously found myself in charge of part way through last year.
• It's coming up to the deadline for people to get abstracts to me for the conference workshop I am organising (and no one has given me ANYTHING yet).
• I have two conference abstracts to write and submit myself sometime in the next three weeks.
• Travel and accomodation for said conferences needs to be booked (it would be embarrassing if I left it too late and couldn't get flights to the workshop I am in charge of).
• The HOD came by today and asked me to review a book for our centre's newsletter. Due Monday. (So how much of the book do you think I actually need to read before I can write a review?)
• That lecture I have to give later this semester? I just realised that, seeing as there are two streams of this course, I have to give it twice. Igh.
• The writing is going S...L...O...W...L...Y.

It's not so much the amount of work that's bothering me here, because looked at objectively, it really isn't all that much. But almost every point on that list is SCARY.

So now I'm going to go and sit with a duvet over my head and tremble for a while. At times like these I find that helps.


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