Life has been pretty hectic around these parts.
Yesterday, I had to take Joe's dad back to the hospital on my way to class. He is back in atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, and is extremely short of breath and symptomatic with it all. Once he was settled into his room and I was able to discuss his plan of care with the cardiac nurse practitioner, I had to head downstairs to take a quiz in my community nursing class, then sit through hours of (very boring) lecture.
All this to say that by the time I got home, I was ready for dinner (beer and pizza...no diet today) and bed. The fact that I had a paper due at midnight the next night did nothing to deter me from falling asleep to Obama's State of the Union.
When I awoke this morning, the anxiety kicked in. Wednesdays are early release days, which means the kids' schedules are wacked, which means MY schedule is also wacked. Instead of sitting down and just getting the darn thing done, I checked my email, started some laundry, visited some blogs and whined on Facebook about my plight.
Wearing my crown as the Queen of Procrastination, I dillied and dallied until MEP from Not to Brag chimed in on my status with a suggestion:
"Here's one of my tricks. Pretend the paper is due in one hour. Sit at the keyboard and type your brains out without editing yourself. Then, when the hour is up, take a look at what you have. It's usually better than you think and you can revise, add, and edit from there."
I took her suggestion and got to it.
90 minutes later, it was written and submitted to my professor via the digital dropbox on our school's website.
I thankfully breathed a huge sigh of relief, took off my crown and prepared to enjoy the rest of my day.
Thanks, Mep! You have reinforced my belief in the power of blog friends!
9 comments:
Happy to help and so, so honored to be the inspiration for this post! It actually made my day to be able to offer advice on a topic that I know a little something about!
Blog friends are REAL and I am really lucky to have you as one of mine!
Your father-in-law is in my prayers.
That mep has been a source of inspiration and motivation to me many many times over the years.
Glad to hear you were able to get it all done!!!
Will be praying again for your father in law!
When I taught college composition, I always encouraged my students to just plan to write for 20 minutes (which turned into longer as they became absorbed). Just thinking you only have to do a couple of parts of a paper in 20 minute stints seems to reduce the stress. Way to overcome and get it done on time! I love my blog friends, too! They are great cheer-leaders!
Sending prayers for your father in law!!! You are an amazing blog friend!!! I am SO glad that we have each other as friends!!!
Yay for MEP! Yay for blogs and Facebook! And yay for getting it done!
With all those exclamations, I did want to say I hope your father-in-law will be all right. Worrying about a family member's health is stressful enough, on top of everything else you tackled yesterday.
Ahh... sometimes advice is the best thing that can make a day better!!!
Saying prayers for your FIL!!!!
Yay for blog friends! I love that we can solicite and get great ideas, honest opinions and amazing advice.
what genius advice. if only it had occurred to me to do that in college... imagine all the sleep i would have benefited from. (or all the extra late night socializing i could have gotten in, to be more realistic of course.)
That MEP is one smart cookie. And I feel very lucky to count you both among my REAL friends. Glad you got your paper done.
Thoughts and prayers for your father-in-law.
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