On stress and coming up with a plan to start dealing with it

As awful as this is to look at, it completely explains how
I've been feeling lately.  Image from here.

Do you ever have those times when you keep going and going and going thinking that if you can just make it to the end of the week or month or semester or whatever then it will all be better?  I've been having one of those times for about a month now.  And I FINALLY made it to the end of the semester at school and, while I told myself over and over and over again that everything would be better and I would be happier and less tired and less stressed when I got there, it turns out I'm not.

I think when you keep going nonstop, sometimes you simply don't take the time to figure out what's causing all of that stress.  Instead, you simply feel the stress instead of dealing with the cause (or causes), which means you deal with the same stress over and over and over.  

So last night, Andrew and I sat down and talked through some of the things that have been bothering me and I finally started to deal with the stress and the things that are causing it.  And while it's not going to go away overnight, at least now 1) Andrew and I are working on it together, which automatically makes me feel less overwhelmed, 2) I've identified what's causing most of the stress instead of simply feeling the stress, and 3) I have a plan (at least the beginning of a plan) in place for dealing with both the causes and the stress.

So here's the beginning of the plan.  

• Take care of myself - get enough sleep, drink water, exercise on a regular basis.
• Spend more time actually talking to Andrew.  We're going to eat dinner together at least once a week, which has been difficult because of our different work schedules, and sit down and talk about the things we need to talk about.
• Plan things out so that my schedule doesn't seem so overwhelming.
• Stop letting myself feel like I'm not good enough.
• Make sure that I'm doing what I need to do for my students at school, but setting some limits so that I'm not completely stressed out the way I've been this semester.