Does anyone else hate Sundays? Instead of being able to enjoy a free day I always stress about the week to come. The ironic part is that tomorrow is a holiday which means no work.

So here is my career: In 2002 I was laid off from a job at an internet provider and given a severance package. I used this money to enroll in graduate school to get my master' in art education. I had substitute taught in the past and both my parents were teachers so I knew soemthing about the profession. And I have always loved art so it seemed a good fit. I earned my degree in two stressful but enlightening years.

I was lucky to get a job offer right after graduation at a private high school that was minutes from my home. The students were wonderful to work with and the other art teacher became a good friend. When the economy took a turn for the worse of course enrollment decilned and cuts had to be made. I worked full time in 04-05, 05-06, and 06-07. In 07-08 I was cut to 92% time and in 08-09 I was cut to 70 something % full time.

In Spring of 08 I was offered a position to teach a class at the college I went to instructing elementary at teacher in using the arts in their classroom. Having two jobs (and undertaking building a house with my husband) was SO STRESS RIDDEN. The next school year, I picked up a second class at the university and my anxiety went into overdrive. This is when I started seeing a therapist for it. I don't know whether it was the therapy itself or the fact that the school year ended but the anxiety released for the summer.

It picked back up again mid July- the shakiness, the diarhhea, the fear. I thought I had caught an illness because what did I have to be anxious about? The tests the doctors gave me said I was healthy.

About a month later I felt better and was able to look forward to the school year. I had great hopes for it because I was only teaching at the university and only four days a week! The first semester went great! I had a perfect balance of free time and responsibilities.

The semester ended and I was settling in to enjoy winter break. I had bought some new paints to work with and new yarn to knit with. I did pretty good until the week before the new semester began. My anxiety went full tilt. Fear, guilt, feelings of worthlessness, catastrophic thinking- what if i couldn't go to work and I lost my job and disappointed my husband and we lost our hours, etc. I obsessively sat at my computer watching netflix and picking at my teeth worrying. I started taking some muscle relaxers that I have for migraines just to be able to sleep. Then TERROR OF TERRORS!!! I went to dinner with my brother and his family and his son vomited. He had come down with the stomach flu. OH MY GOD now I was going to get it! I operated at a anxiety level of 10 for three days. I managed to get through my first class but onmy drive home the anxiety came back just as bad and continued the next day and the next. I was supposed to have a 4pm class that Wednesday but at the last minute I called my doctor for an emergency appointment. I was a shaking, heart pounding, mess! He decided to put me back on Lexapro (I was trying out Celexa which is supposed to be almost the same thing) and gave me a prescription for Klonopin.

When I got home from the doctor, I sent out an apology email to my students for missing class and had my husband go get the prescription for me. One of our friends was over and he understood what was happening. Just knowing he understood helped a lot. My husband really can't relate, he's never been there. He is the strongest person I know. So for the next few days I woke up, drank a glass of water, took my medecine, and watched Netflix.

Last night I finally felt like eating. Anxiety does bad things to my stomach and guts. I won't go into detail but… yuck. We went to or favorite restaurant and I felt better having a good meal in me. We went for a short walk in the freezing cold and talked about plans to put up a fence to have animals.

Today when I woke up it was the same: I felt ok for a few minutes then the anxiety came. It's not as bad as it was the past few days. I don't know what I will do for the rest of the day or tomorrow and Tuesday for that matter. I feel like I need to make myself go see my neice and nephews jsut to face the puking incident. Does that seem wise? Are they still contagious?

Throughout my life, if I have had too much free time I tended to channel it into anxiety. I wonder where the tendancy to do this came from. My Dad was the type of person who worked from sun up to sun down and I always felt useless if I wanted to lie around and watch tv or sleep until noon. He would get mad if we did this. That is probably a big part of it. My Mom, who died when I was 12, was always stressing about cleaning the house and such, too. We never went on vacation. It was always work, work, work or in my case at my young age, avoiding work. Hmm now that I think about it, one way I used to get out of work was by playing sick. Then I could lay about!

I wonder if this set up some kind of system in my brain that makes me automatically feel sick when I have to do something I don't want to- like work? It doesn't really make sense, because I do enjoy my job. As I said, i had a great semester last semester and this one should be just as good. Nothing changed really… it's the same classes. But… it's winter. I've always hated winter. The isolation, the germs. It's no small wonder I haven't turned into a hand washer.