Deadline Anxiety and Dinosaurs: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Work-Bombs

I began this weekend feeling triumphant.

Working draft of an article?

Check!

Application sent off for a Postdoc?

Check Check! 

But then . . .

I remembered that before the end of April I'll have to complete the following:

1) A conference paper on Pearl

2) A conference paper on Parcevals saga

3) A reading and parts list for the Malory Aloud session at K'zoo.

4) Another application . . . or two . . . or three.

5) An enormous pile of grading, all due before K'zoo.

6) Revisions of the aforementioned article.

Not to mention: continued Old Norsing, teaching, working on the book, working on the critical edition, blogging, etc.

After compiling that to-do list early this morning, I spent a few moments feeling like this guy:

As a result, I may have looked a bit like this as I ate breakfast:

Once I collected myself, I spent some time trying to figure out how I could avoid feeling like this:

Or like this:

as I move into the coming weeks. 

I think it's safe to say that we all have similar moments of panic and/or despair (or a hybrid of the two: "panespair," perhaps?), and that we all try hard to avoid getting to the point where we're in constant reaction mode. What works for me when faced with these kinds of situations is a combination of humor (mostly of the self-depricating variety -- hence this post), exercise, a fair dose of procrastination (hence this post), the fervent assemblage of a battle plan, and then a series of quasi-valiant efforts to adhere to said plan. So far, so good: the panic is abating, and the to-do list is looking a bit more conquerable.

Nevertheless, I know that given the amount of things on that list, I'll likely finish out the month of April kind of like this:

I know at some level that I find myself in these situations not because I'm incapable of managing my schedule but because I know I can get through them and be better for having done so. It's an idea, anyway. This isn't to say, however, my modus operandi is optimal by any stretch. I still have a lot of work to do. I would prefer, on most days, to feel more like this:

than like this:

What I can do, in the meanwhile, is try to trust that I know what I'm doing. Easier said than done at times, but I have a feeling it will help. Especially when the deadlines do this:






N.B.: Many thanks to Buzzfeed for compiling the gifs and giving me the initial inspiration for the post!