Fall is finally in the air. This week I was met with a not-so-subtle chill as I left in the wee hours of the morning for work during the week. I can finally break out my cozy sweaters and over-sized shawls to accompany my sweater weather mug. Basically, the season finally matches my overall aesthetic, and I couldn’t be happier. Actually, I could.

The stress is more real than ever before. There truly aren’t enough hours in the day for the amount of work I have yet to accomplish in the next eight weeks. However, I have managed to stay semi-productive. The reason I say semi lies rooted deep in my unconquerable anxiety and introverted tendencies.

For example, after an eight-hour shift interacting with customers, all I want to do is get lost in Netflix. I have no desire to sit down and write more of my thesis or write a paper for class or read the never-ending slew of historically based novels for a literature class. I would much prefer sleep, but school wins every time.

However, my anxiety has been trying to get the best of me, which is made visible through the constant onslaught of hives and my signature twitching eye. I have been trying to combat these signs of a nervous breakdown through budgeting my time better and sitting down with a cup of tea almost every night. It has been helping some, but not curing the issue. I’m almost positive I’ll always suffer with anxiety – I just have to find better ways to control it.

On a lighter note, I managed to squeak in a few hours to see my friends, which as always, was a delight. I realized that I have to take the time to decompress or I’ll combust, and no one needs or wants that to happen. This week truly forced me to reflect. I will always be the person who wants to cover all the bases, to make sure that I’m fully prepared for anything that can be thrown my way. This, in essence, is my fatal flaw.

I honestly don’t know how to say “no” to people. I stretch myself so thin that I forget about myself some of the time. I go into things standing firm in my “one-hour” time frame, and I end up staying well past the limit I had originally set for myself. This all connects to last week’s installment about my work schedule in relation to my school schedule. I feel bad that I can’t just let loose whenever I want or do whatever I want. With adulthood comes a sense of freedom, yet with that freedom comes responsibility, and this is me trying to encompass my responsible persona.

Living out on my own, i.e. being an actual adult, I find that the most interesting things happen to me on a daily basis. Earlier in the week, I got lost in paper writing and forgot the intense need to quench my thirst. After three hours, I emerged from the hypnotizing LED screen and methodical clacking of the keys to finally slake the thirst that now wracked my body. I entered my kitchen, opened the fridge, grabbed the best apple juice on the face of the earth, and crash …

You see, my favorite apple juice comes in a pricey four pack in little intricate glass bottles because I like to pretend I’m fancy. Actually, the juice is so good it’s worth the price. When I grabbed the second to last bottle, it hit the lip of the door, fell out of my hand in slow motion, and smashed all over my kitchen floor.

Just picture little old me, hair in the opposite of a cute messy bun, glasses on, baggy sweatpants, attempting to pick up the minuscule shards of glass out of the puddle of liquid pooling around my fridge. Then I had to mop up the apple juice with paper towels and Clorox wipes. My floor was sticky for three days, and I’m still finding little slivers of glass in my living room and my bedroom, two rooms where my fridge does not exist.

Another interesting facet to my week involves bugs … my favorite part of the week. Every night before I go to bed, I turn off all my string lights, lamps, and wax warmers. Every night this week as I went to switch off my Eiffel Tower lamp in my living room, I found myself face-to-face with a stinkbug. These stinkbugs also like to sit in the exact same spot on the lamp, near the bottom, directly in my line of sight.

Each time I see the creepy crawly insects I participate in a full-body cringe and proceed to grab them and give them the royal flush. It has become a ritual I wish would end, and with the weather dropping and fall clearly becoming more of a reality, I think this is in my near future.

My weeks are always the most interesting even when I don’t manage to do more than work and go to school. However, events occur, and I always have an interesting story to share with the world. This upcoming weekend my family is making a trip to see me before my birthday next week. I am looking forward to days off work and time spent with the people I miss the most. As always, coffee is literally leading me by the hand through this thing that we call life. In fact, this morning I had two mochas from my favorite diner and they managed to spark a productive streak in me. Maybe that’s what I need, more coffee. Time will tell, I guess.