enjoy the humor of the situation
1. I woke up in A Mood. I had to be at work "early," and "early" for me equals nausea and general feelings of awfulness. Plus, I was stressed out about figuring out my thesis and calling The Guy back (I get anxious about things, so sue me). So work was bad.
2. On my lunch break, I went to the program lounge to eat my spinach/cuke/hummus wrap and grapes and drink my fill of free lounge coffee. My former TA came in and asked me how I was doing. She apparently didn't buy my answer and probed further. At that point, the stress and worry and anxiety and general sadness about my dad and my dog bubbled to the surface and I had to fight back tears as I tried to explain the Thesis Mess. She could see I was upset and told me to come talk to her in her office sometime. I said okay and then left to go back to work.
3. Back at work, I was really agitated and upset and spent the remaining 3.5 hours pacing around trying to keep my cool. I finally decided to see the humor in the situation. "Hokay. Dad's in the hospital. Dog's having seizures. Thesis is eating your brain. All I need is for my pickup truck to break down and to find my man in bed with another woman, and I'd be living my very own country-western song." That did it, and I was able to laugh at myself, sort of. Also, The Guy called and left me another message, following up on the previous (unanswered) message he left.
4. After work, I went back to the TA's office to sign up for her office hours and she happened to be there, talking to one of my profs from fall quarter. She said she could talk to me right then and we went into her office and, well, it was exactly what I needed. She is so incredibly kind and sensitive and encouraging--basically, the exact opposite of my experiences with faculty and students here. I told her about the personal stuff going on and was able to joke about it and she told me that it's so hard to be here and trying to get work done when personal stuff is going on far away and no one suspects what's going on and everyone expects you to perform like nothing's going on. I was still getting emotional, which is embarrassing as hell, but it was still really helpful and she talked to me about my thesis and gave me articles to read and offered to lend me books and gave me a mini deadline to give her an idea of my project proposal but told me not to stress about it. I couldn't believe it, I wanted to cry (again) because she was being so nice and helpful. So, I have a slightly more concrete idea of what I'm doing and I'm going to go talk to Jennifer tomorrow and beg her to be my reader.
5. Called The Guy back and left him a message telling him that I've had an abysmal week and could we maybe plan on doing something next week when I've gotten myself together? He called me back and things are cool. I still feel ambivalent about the whole thing, but the general consensus from friends is to give the guy at least a second date and see, which is entirely reasonable. So okay.
6. Attempted to do some thesis reading, worked a bit on my Oral Narrative midterm, and basically gave myself a good portion of the evening to just Settle Down. I'm gonna get through tomorrow and then we'll move from there, right?