little things

On the cusp of an intense week, and I am wishing I could avoid it somehow. Pressing work/class projects and deadlines, followed by a heavy and emotional weekend. The march of time - would that we could slow it!

I have a particular presentation to make that I am dreading. I quite enjoy the class I am taking but I get anxious about the public speaking aspect. This has been a long-held fear of mine. Public speaking. And the other is math. (I really hate math and think I would be a good case study for sufferers of "math anxiety". There truly is such a thing. And I am a pretty good case if there was one. I freeze up if I have to do the most basic of figures around someone, and can only manage the most basic calculations, and sometimes even not then.) But public speaking is something I have successfully avoided most of my life. In high school I openly told teachers I would not do presentations. They could fail me if they liked - I just wouldn't.

Hasn't helped me any, though. Now, I must tackle this thing, because it's begun to hinder me in my job. So I will be making a presentation on the issue of diarrheal disease in the developing world. What a way to start, eh? One of my first public speaking efforts, and I decide to talk about poo. I think it should go over well.

My treat to myself this week is finishing the painting I have been working on, and hanging it in my work space. I have had a bare space just waiting to be filled, but haven't yet found the time to finish it. Now I've told myself this is the week, I will accomplish what I have set out to do, and give myself a new happy painting to look at. (The image included is a working draft of the happy painting I refer to.) This is the last of three happy paintings; they give me a bit of wild colour and mental cheer. A mental health break from white walls and Outlook calendars and never-ending to-do lists.

I am really looking forward to summer. Long nights. Good-smelling breezes carrying through the apartment. Sunday barbeques with Canadian beef. Playing Carcassone on the deck as the sun sets. If I think about it long enough I can almost imagine that it's not -17 degrees and that I have to work in the morning.... Sigh. Does anyone else have the winter blues?