I’ve been in a little over my head the past few weeks. This wasn’t one of my original ideas for O but it seemed fitting for this week. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to go from a fairly easy 15 credit course load during winter term to a full time job, a four credit online economics course, and a blog challenge. This transition has been exhausting. I know a lot of people who have way more going on than that, so I’m definitely not complaining, but it has been a bit overwhelming both mentally and physically.
My baby immune system catches just about everything, so in addition to still regaining strength after my septic shock incident, I caught a stomach virus at work. I couldn’t eat a real meal for a week so my body has been exhausted. By the time I got off work, I barely had any energy for my homework or blog posts which is why I was a few letters behind. I managed to start most of them but couldn’t get through to the editing and posting. Many people write very short challenge posts – 100 to 300 words – and they are great, but that’s not how I work. I’ve been writing shorter than usual posts, but they are by no means short. Most are still around 500 words, which takes a good bit of time to write and edit, especially for some of the more sensitive topics or the ones where I really don’t know what to say. However, once I challenge myself, I rarely back down so I will write all 26 of these posts even if they’re a few days late! Even though sometimes taking on a lot at once, especially more than my body is physically used to, can be overwhelming, it builds my strength surprisingly fast. I wasn’t physically ready for all the walking when I went back to Drexel in January, but I got stronger much faster than I would have at home! Some days, I don’t handle stress well, but other days it keeps me focused. I’d much rather have a lot to do to keep my mind active than sit around bored. When I was in treatment, people were always commenting on how jealous they were of my free time, but I’m a productive person and having too much free time brings out my depression which is never good. I have a lot of respect for the people who juggle work with more classes, second jobs, and families to take care of. I’m hoping that ability just comes with time, because I’ve never seen a “Life” class offered at Drexel. Or a class about how to deal with taxes, insurance, investing or other adult things that have been popping up recently. Am I the only one who thinks life skills like those would be more valuable in overwhelming adult situations than a list of memorized equations or dates?
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AuthorI’m Karen. I was originally diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in August 2004 when I was 10 years old. When I was working on my college and scholarship application essays two years ago, I wrote about my journey. Although it was a rough few years, it became such an influential part of my life that I can’t, and wouldn’t want to, imagine my life without having had cancer. I called it the worst best thing that ever happened to me. Archives
April 2022
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