Do you ever have such a wonderful weekend that–though you totally intend to update your blog–you spend most of it baking cookies, watching Shakespeare, and drinking sangria with your friends (followed by napping!) and totally forget? Just me? Oh, whoops.

This weekend was wonderful, because that is pretty much all that I did for it. (I took a break to read 200 pages of class things, which involved learning more disgusting facts about monkey sexual behavior, ie the most lasting educational legacy of my time at college, fun fact.) And you guys, it was necessary for me to continue to get out of bed.

That’s because last week I simultaneously started my first week of my last semester of college and my fancy new 40-hour-a-week, yes-we-have-a-401k-and-snacks job. Which is great! Employment is wonderful! My coworkers are a delight! The snacks are great! I am taking a class with someone famous enough to have a Wikipedia page!

And I am so! Very! Tired!

That + my weakling college vegetarian immune system meant that I spent most of last week sort-of-kind-of sick. You know, when you feel like you can’t legitimately take medication without Raising Eyebrows, but you would still prefer to stay in bed? Super fun!

And you guys, I am kind of freaked out by the semester ahead. Real talk: I am generally pretty upbeat on this blog (Dakar excepted, and just to be clear that was still getting a positive spin much of the time, because my emotional peaks and valleys were pretty peaked and valleyed during that time). And for the most part, that’s pretty reflective of my general outlook! Despite my scowly nature, I’m a pretty happy person. I have a great job and wonderful mentors and a nice apartment. I like my life a lot! (There are others like it, but this one is mine.)

But the situation right now is this: I felt kind of beat up by the first week of school/work. And that was without me writing anything for the honors thesis, and that was without me having any real homework other than reading (here’s looking at you, 9,000 words of writing coming up for my grad course). Not to mention that I’m still early days on RespectCon. And I am legitimately worried that I may have run up against the wall of Juggling Too Many Things, One of Which Might Be a Chainsaw.

And that is really scary to me. I don’t want to be someone who keeps reading the same advice from Merlin Mann and Jen Dziura and identifying with it while not doing anything about it. This is the only time that I’ve ever felt like I wanted to be more like Penelope Trunk (respect to the woman, but we are Not That Alike). I just need to be able to buckle down and do this thing for four months.

I need to refocus on why it is that I am making myself do this even when I don’t want to, really. Because if I don’t I am going to have another crying-in-cars style breakdown to the Mountain Goats (fun fact: that was not the only hit for that search term on my blog) two months from now, and I know that and I hate it, because it is sad.

So, time to drink some tea, and make some lists, and Do The Work.