Things that I did today: in short, a full day of work + applying for a job + negotiating the purchase of an apartment + some extra rush work on top of my regular work + some other odds and ends of life and work admin. The part I may be proudest of is still making myself do pilates at 9pm despite being utterly exhausted.

More specifically:

• (7 a.m.) Woke up without a headache! Hooray!
• (8 a.m.) Caught up on lecture notes for one class for an hour before my morning class started. This was blissful and I finished a set. Then I realized there was another whole set to get through before actually being caught up. An emotional rollercoaster.
• (9 a.m.) Attended a class virtually. Took moderately good notes. Also answered some emails and sent some messages and satisfyingly checked them off my list. Do you ever get overwhelmed and not answer people right away and then it sort of just sits there in your mind, stressing you out? I do that all the time.
• (10:30) Made a phone call I was nervous about. Regarding whether or not to take that 1-year contract. I am beginning to feel that I’m making far too big a deal out of this, but it’s still very stressful. Call was meant only to last the 20 minutes I had between classes. Lasted an hour instead. Frustrating! Especially so because now I am again two lectures behind on lecture notes despite having partially caught up this morning. Sigh.
• (11:30) Also received a rush translation offer in the meantime. Make hay while the sun shines! Jumped right on it, zipped through it, and delivered. Boom. (No point logging into that class halfway through, right? Right?)
• (12:00) Boyfriend returned home with news that some annoying-sounding older lady was sniffing around the little apartment. No! I’m so close in my negotiations on that! Called my mother to confirm our negotiation game plan. Sent off a quick email closing the deal. Meanwhile realized the deadline for an examining position I meant to apply to was tomorrow and it requires, like, five references. Desperately began messaging potential references. Is the fact that you don’t even have time to apply for a job a sign that you probably don’t need that job? Maybe! But they very rarely hire new people to their rather exclusive ranks of special and exclusive examiners, so seems silly not to go for it. (Except that who knows what my blood pressure even is at this point, simultaneously translating, emailing the building company lady to negotiate the little apartment, and trying to cobble together an application and five references. Related: perils of being freelance are that it’s awkward to find someone who counts as your “line manager”, unless I am doing this wrong. Which totally could be!)
• (1:00) Did another translation. Sent more emails. I don’t even know, honestly.
• (1:30) Lunch with boyfriend. Suddenly remembered that meant to prepare a brilliant introduction to research methods for my class. (I have to teach them how to read and, in theory, write research articles in English, but they’ve never actually seen a research article and they never even seem especially familiar with the scientific method. It’s awkward.) Scribbled a lesson plan on the back of a receipt while eating.
• (2:00) Teaching the class. Still in my exercise clothes (I meant to exercise at 12:30 and shower but hey-ho).
• (3:00) Still teaching but also negotiating on the apartment and fielding clarification requests from my references. (I scrapped my idea for an illustrative example of research methods in action seconds before launching into it because I came up with a better example: the efficacy of distance learning! So timely! So relevant. Huzzah! Pretty sure only 2/60 of them are actually paying attention – so the answer is probably no: distance learning is not particularly effective – but whatever.)
• (4:00) Crashing through another translation.
• (5:30) Finished. Shoulders are hunched up way around my ears. Decided a partial break was warranted and wandered out of my cave office nook to talk to boyfriend about window screens for the new place. Glamorous. He has found cheaper ones that may be as good. Score!
• (6:00) Attempted to teach English to boyfriend. Largely unsuccessful. Sigh.
• (6:30) Scrolling mindlessly.
• (7:00) Time to finish up that application for that examining position! I will just bang this out in half an hour, I thought, optimistically scrolling through two pages of short-answer questions that seem to be about work and life philosophies. It took until 9.
• (9:00) Pilates! You can pry this evening’s pilates session away from my cold, dead, hunched-over shoulders. Also because I’ve had a headache, like, 1/3 of the last 14 days or so. Pretty sure they’re tension headaches. No thank you. (And also, how else can I justify the fact that I’ve sat unshowered and in my uncomfortable sports bra the entire day?)
• (9:30) Showering and making soup and listening to the Daily. This is the life. Suddenly realized I hadn’t even washed my face today. Good lord.
• (10:00) Soup and watching Ginny and Georgia. Yessssss. Friday night for the win. (For like 3 hours and now I should have been in bed at least an hour ago but here we are.)

Good night, world.

(I cannot think of an illustrative photo for today. What would it be? I can’t think of how to usefully represent practically vibrating with adrenaline and tension to get a seemingly insurmountable number of things done simultaneously, and then the rush of relief at sitting down with my soup and Netflix.)