Breathe, Breathe . . . In, Out, In, Out

I keep thinking my reasons for hyperventilation have ended, only to be presented with whole new reasons for the hyperventilation to continue.

I'd been freaking out for a couple of weeks, because the choir director requested another girl and I play a piano-organ duet of the Hallelujah Chorus--you know, the famous one that Handel wrote. From The Messiah . Not easy practicin', if you know what I mean. She told us two weeks before the Christmas program. If I've developed carpal tunnel in the past couple of weeks, it's not from my job. It's from practicing and practicing and practicing. I've decided practicing and playing a musical instrument is sometimes quite cruel--you work your hands to the bone (seriously, people wonder why there's so little padding on my hands--piano, people, piano) for hours on end to play something that is over in three minutes. Granted, those three minutes totally rock (like they did yesterday morning during the ward Christmas program), but it still seems less than fair.

Before that, I'd been freaking out about getting my graduate school application in to Chicago in plenty of time. Before that, it was figuring out all of the requirements for my company's Affirmative Action Plan (which, lucky me!, I get to write and assemble and analyze and ick). Before that, it was figuring out whether or not to find a new job. (Since I'm so in love with this one, th., as you guessed . . .)

After the Christmas program, I thought I had nothing left to worry about. (At least, nothing left to fruitfully worry about . . . after all, I trust all of the people writing my recommendations to submit them in a timely manner and send them off to help determine my fate. I can't control them.)

But then today, I spoke to one of my recommenders--my most important recommender, because he was my undergraduate advisor and he actually knows me quite well. (All aspects of my personality, really, and he's still willing to write me a recommendation--that's saying something) He hadn't received important links from one of the universities I'm applying to, the links that led him to their online recommendation system . . .

And then the hyperventilation started all over again . . .