The best-laid plans...

Treadmill workout - 1 hour of intervals at 2% incline:

• 5 minutes of walking
• 6 x walking/running intervals: 2 minutes walking, 2 minutes running at ~10K pace; increase speed by .1 each time (total of 24 minutes)
• 6 x walking/running intervals: 2 minutes walking, 3 minutes running at ~10K pace; increase speed by .1 each time (total of 30 minutes)
• ~2 minutes walking to cool down

I like intervals on the treadmill because they break up the monotony a bit. Today's workout was challenging - I felt tired and blah, but I was glad I did it anyway.

On a different note, I'm feeling frustrated tonight - at myself and at others. I try to establish limits in terms of letting people know what I can and can't do. I try to set myself up for success in terms of scheduling so that I won't get stressed out. In the past, I haven't been too good about that. I overwork and overbook myself, and the outcome is never good. At least three times this year so far, overdoing it has brought me to a miserable and scary place.

I'm working hard to get better at handling stress, but it is a long road to improvement. Stress is my kryptonite.

I made a huge effort to limit my obligations this fall so that I could focus on just two or three key tasks and keep stress at bay. Today I found out that, through absolutely no choice of my own and due to poor planning on the part of others, I'm getting a lot more on my plate. It's very last minute. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have arranged the fall semester in a much different way. I expressed my concern about it and was basically told that I'm just going to have to deal with it.

I'm worried and kind of scared about what this will mean re: stress. I'm mad because the person who's responsible for overturning my plans knows about all of the mental health stuff but doesn't seem to believe me. He sees me show up every day, get my work done, and do it well, and he assumes that surely everything is fine. He has absolutely no idea. Sometimes I am at my most productive when I am at my lowest: it's like I split into 2+ people, and each person does their own task, and well. It's one of the things I tend to do when my brain goes into red alert mode. It works, but it's exhausting, and it means I'm not in a good place.

I don't want to make excuses. I don't want to shirk my responsibilities. But I want to have some room to set what I feel are necessary limits/boundaries without someone coming in and totally destroying them.