Welcome the new dawn of attempted monotasking. I have decided to give up all of my overachiever extracurricular activities in the hope of being able to do my job: teaching children.

This means giving notice that I will no longer be the union president. It also means cutting back on the extra work I was doing to help while our school psychologist is out (I am running meetings), although I only have that commitment until the end of the month and may just coast on through.

Essentially I will cause some difficulty for some people, but I would be a total hypocrite if I didn't take care of myself. I would tell (and have told) colleagues to do exactly this sort of thing when their bodies tell them it's too much. Mine has spoken loud and clear.

This isn't a pity party, so I'll keep the somatic list short and sweet: I cry at work every day, I am always tired, I feel sabotaged, and last Friday at a union-sponsored bargaining workshop, I binged and then puked up all my dinner out of sheer frustration. My blood pressure is 120/80 when I wake up, and then up to 140/95 during the day. Oddly (not so), my BP is normal in the summer. Massage school here I come.

My lease is up at my apartment on November 30th. I will be moving in with a friend who often has friends living in her large, lovely, peaceful house. My cats will go to live with my ex-husband, their dad, so I don't feel as if I'm abandoning them. And when the sweat-equity houses are done being built this spring, I will move into one of the cheap rentals that will then be vacated. Of course I will do the networking now! Vashon rentals require a plan to get into.

I feel much calmer having decided these things. As I told a friend last night, the last significant "cut and run" episode was back in 1990, when I had my dad and brother come get me in Nebraska and drive me back to Seattle. I called my employer from a rest stop in Wyoming to say I wasn't coming back. This time I found a way to cut a bit without excising an entire life, and I'm not running.

Reminders to breathe and be good to myself will be received warmly and with loving appreciation. And my grateful thanks go to Little Miss Thing, who despite her love of sarcasm was able to boil it down and help me see what wasn't working. I so appreciate her. (Right now she's reading this and thinking, "Shut the fuck up, you attention whore, everything's gonna be fine," or something like that, which means she doesn't like praise but she would do the same thing again if one of her friends needed it. And the G&T didn't hurt, either.)