Overwhelmed
This happens every year at this time. A slow, peaceful summer of work suddenly turns into a raging rapid, and my boat is woefully under-staffed and under-supplied. I think this year was worse because I decided to take vacation right as I knew it was going to get busy.
Not that I regret my vacation. I certainly don’t! We got to see family and friends, hang out in some of our favorite places, and take care of some business. It was a good trip, eventful but not overwhelming, and we squeezed as much in as we could in the small space of time we had. We drove back on Monday, and I went to work on Tuesday. I should have stayed home.
As we approach the beginning of the semester, production moves into a critical stage. I’m thankful that classes at my college start about a week later than everywhere else, which means I have an extra week to panic but also an extra week to get things done. I’m hiring new student workers, trying to keep up with the influx of requests, and trying to shove completed materials out the door as fast as I can. We are almost 100 books ahead of where we were at the same time last year. That is good and bad, since this means that I’m doing a good job of getting students to respond to our requests, but also means the workload is doubled. And it doubled in about a week’s time. Exactly the week that I was gone.
Yay, us.
And to top that off, it appears that I have hurt myself. I see the orthopedist tomorrow, and appointment that was scheduled weeks ago, to talk about what can be further done to my knee to get me into skiing shape. I’ve been walking my 2.5 miles a day, every day with few exceptions, and feeling great. The week we were in Missouri, I didn’t walk. There was no good place to do it (I can’t walk on hard surfaces for that kind of mileage) and it would have been disruptive to the rest of the household. I didn’t walk when I got back on Tuesday because I was still brain-dead. Wednesday I suited up and headed to the green space, and within about 20 steps, realized something was wrong. The lateral part of my left food hurts when I step on it, and I am getting what feels like cramps in my calf muscle. My ankle is swollen, and if I press on the outside of it (like crossing my ankles) it hurts like blue blazes. I can’t turn my foot inward at all. I thought initially it was my plantar fasciitis coming back, but the pain is not in my heel, and PF doesn’t impact ankle movement. I don’t know what I have, but I suspect some tendon damage somewhere, possibly peroneal tendonitis. This would put a serious cramp in my walking regimen, as it requires immobilization and lots of rest. Then some PT. Actually, lots of PT.
I don’t have time to be hurt, for sure. But I also want to keep walking, and if I am going to keep walking, I’m going to have to get this treated. This is not one of those “no pain no gain” things; if I’ve truly done this damage to myself, I need to fix it. It will not go away on its own. Kind of like my knees.
I’m glad I have a sit-down job, and that I can sometimes do my job from home. But still. Don’t wanna!
