Stress is carrying around an extra weight everywhere I go. It’s a backpack that keeps refilling, no matter how diligently I try each day to lighten its load.

Stress is not being able to pay attention to what someone is telling me because I’m still thinking about what I’m supposed to be doing next and then and after that.

Stress is knowing that even if I spend hours grading papers or writing plans, there will be a new pile, another set, the very next day.

The stress comes with me to work, to pick up my boys, and back home with me. It’s hard to remember when I wasn’t worried about what I wasn’t getting done, or when I didn’t answer, “It’s busy,” when someone asked me how things are going.

School will be done in five weeks. My stress backpack will be lighter then, but it certainly won’t be empty. There will be the all-day job of parenting two little ones, and then the teaching tasks to do after the boys go to bed – making plans for next year, finalizing my graduate school portfolio. There will always be dishes and laundry and bills, the adult versions of homework.

Today it was too much.  I threw in the towel, sitting down with the backpack and eating Ben & Jerry’s. Which means it’ll be twice as heavy in the morning.

So… carrying that around should help me work off the calories from my evening of indulgence, right?

Let’s go with that theory and see what happens tomorrow.