Ay, there's the rub...

I realized today that lately I've been feeling really stressed. Not the same kind of stress I felt in school with a million terrible papers crawling up on me in the middle of the night like a thousand man-eating spiders. (Wow, that is an overdramatic analogy.) But it's more the stress of feeling like your life is in complete chaos and upheaval and there's nothing you can do to stop it. In fact, the harder you try to fix things, the worse they get.

Since the moment I got here, there were a million things to do that I didn't particularly want to do and that I didn't have the energy for. Right after I checked in, I knew I should unpack and try to make friends but all I really wanted to do was sleep...or maybe do a quick sightseeing activity. The next day, I needed to get a phone and toothpaste (I had been using my roommate's up until that point), etc. But it seemed like so much work to find out where to get those things and then when I finally found the stores, they were closed (of course, everything here opens late and closes early). Anyways, none of these things individually is a big deal, but a whole bunch of them kind of catches up with you.

Today, for example, I needed to do laundry. (Well, I'd been needing to do laundry for like three days.) The laundry room is open from 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. I work from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the weekdays and I'm always sightseeing on the weekends. (I don't believe in sacrificing sightseeing time when I have such a limited amount of it and I'm in London, for crying out loud!) So today I got home from work at 6:00 p.m. and got my laundry in the machine by 6:15. I ate dinner and came back probably right after the load was done. But there are three washers and only two dryers, and I had to wait around for 20 minutes before I could put my clothes in. By the time I finally got to put my clothes in, it was 7:15 or so and the laundry room closes at 8:00. Not only that, but they say you have to be done with your load by 7:45. The dryer lets you pay for 20-minute increments, so I got 24 minutes. Of course, that's not enough time to dry your clothes, especially when the dryer is crappy. So I am now sitting in my tiny dorm room with my half-dry clothes strewn about me, supposedly drying. That kind of thing just makes me feel like my life is out-of-control.

Probably I'm overreacting, but it really is how I feel. And it's starting to affect me. I have been incredibly exhausted, and yesterday I went to bed really early. Consequently, I wasn't horribly tired today, but I still managed to do some pretty dumb things. Like I was transferring trains at Green Park, like I always do after work, and I just started following the "Way Out" signs instead of the signs for the Victoria Line. Now, those of you who know me best are probably thinking, "So what? Jessi gets lost all the time!" Ah, but not on the Tube! I am the queen of navigating the Tube! :-) So it was very weird.

Also, I managed to get out of the shower today without fully washing the shampoo out of my hair. And there's nothing wrong with the water pressure of the showers here. They may get clogged and overflow occasionally and they may be dirty sometimes, but the water pressure is perfect. So that was totally me just not paying attention or something. Actually, I don't even know how it happened. Again, very weird.

So yeah, I feel like my life is in complete upheaval and I am not very good at just accepting that and going with the flow. However, I also feel like I am always complaining on this blog and just writing about the bad things that are happening. (I think it's just because I have pictures of all the good things, so I feel like those stories are already being told. So I hope you are all looking at the Facebook pictures as well.)

Of course I am really enjoying being in England! My internship is somewhat boring, but hey, it's a book publishing internship, which is what I really wanted! I'm very glad that I have four weeks of free travel after the internship is over though. It's hard to switch between "work mode" and "sightseeing mode" rapidly because work mode is all about getting things done and checking things off your list. And sightseeing mode really shouldn't be that way for it to be most enjoyable. It should be like reading poetry...taking it slow, drinking it all in, savoring every moment.