Kind of a wierd day. Check in day with the doc this morning to make sure the blood sugar is OK and then ended up talking about carpal tunnel most of the morning. Looks like I'm in for some hand therapy for the next two weeks or months. Fun.

I did get to release a book into the wild today. That's always a fun thing for me. It's a real rush when someone reports picking it up on the Bookcrossing website, so now I'l wait and see.

OK. I'm feeling better now. I'm still discouraged, tired of my job, but I'm rested so I at least feel a little more able to cope. Thanks for your concern.

My next big challenge is my final paper for my Intro to Theology class. The last big paper I had, the mid-term, I put off until that morning and finally e-mailed it into the professor without even proofing it. (I still can't believe I did that.) I'm not going to do that with this paper. I'm not. So, even though I haven't started yet, I am going to start today. That gives me one week. I'm going to do this. Right? Right.

I think finals are the hardest not because they are the longest, but because at this point I don't care all that much any more. I still love the class, but all I really want is for it to be over. I'm tired of having this hanging over my head. I just want to be done so I can move on to Christmas or something. Of course, just give me a couple of weeks and I'll feel the same way about Christmas. What is there about us that always needs to move on? Is it because of our temporal natures? Why do we always want to move on? Is that with everything, or only when we get close to seeing the end of something? Is it universal, or just a Western thing? (Why am I so full of questions today? Maybe because it's easier than coming up with answers.) All I'm sure of is that I bet that I keep my blog entries up to date for the next week because that will give me an excuse not to work on my paper.

I am so discouraged tonight. One would think that after 4 days away from my job and my kids (I'm a youth director) I would be happy to be back with them, but I'm not. This morning with the kids wasn't so bad--I won't talk about all my Sunday school teachers who didn't show up--but by this afternoon I didn't even want to be around the kids. Everything they did made me irritable. I can't see the potential anymore, it seems, just the annoying bits. I feel like a drill sergeant more than a minister and I know they feel it, too. I desperately need to be somewhere else, I just don't know where to be, where to go. But I do know that this is not fair to me or them. We both need and deserve better. If something doesn't change soon, I'll be damaging them, not helping them.