Time suck

I hesitate to say life is busy, but I do have a lot of things to do at the moment. Many of them are things that shouldn't take a lot of time, but do. For example, buying a plane ticket. Shouldn't be that hard. But, I have to coordinate getting to and from the airport, figure out what days to fly, wait for a paycheck, then gamble with prices going up or down, which means monitoring prices over a couple of weeks. Time consuming.

Or picking a doctor. I have no idea how to pick a PCP. I would love to just call up and say, "Hey, I'm a single 30-something woman looking for a PCP. Who do you recommend?" But, I don't think that would fly. So, I have to find doctors that I can actually get to via bus, then figure out what all their credentials mean, and then pick one. All using a very user-unfriendly system.

I have also spent a great deal of time finding housing. Again, a decision that shouldn't have been so complicated, yet was. And now I have to plan a move for this coming weekend and work out the details of that.

At work I'm balancing research for the committee I chair, my work for 2 different departments, and at some point before the end of the week I need to throw together a rough draft of a presentation for a conference taking place in 2 1/2 weeks. Which, I really don't have time for at work, but I don't have a lot of time in my personal life for it right now, either. None of which is helped by the amount of time it takes to travel from point A to point B by bus.

Really the biggest time suck I'm facing right now is worry. I have so many things to work on and decisions to make, and no clue how to deal with any of it, so I worry and worry and worry. And worry eats up a LOT of time. It's not just something you feel, it's something that really takes up resources - energy, time, attention, emotion. I wish there were a way to just pause time, regroup, and then jump back into things.

But since there isn't, I will just try not to panic too much.