My Stress Makes Itself! (no, really)

I am really, really good at putting totally ludicrous amounts of stress on my own shoulders. I mean really good. I can take my totally normal, moderately stressed life and turn it into a maelstrom of anxiety and things that explode if you look at them the wrong way.

Take now, for example. I may sound calm, but inside my fingers are ten thousand exclamation points dying to get out. Yes, literally. And why have my fingers become a wasteland of unrealized punctuation? I'm going to tell you.

I have imposed yet another deadline on myself: to complete a draft of my wip by the stroke of midnight on 11/30. This, in addition to the November Edition of the Cello Project Vlog, Thanksgiving, my birthday, and the day job (which occasionally counts for 10 things with commas). There is no one holding me to this deadline (other than my crit partners), no one to threaten me with horrible things like unemployment or a full day without the internet. There's no one but me (and ok, again, the cp's, but I don't think they'll ditch me if I fail) to keep me in line on this one.

And yet.

I feel the stress in my freaking bones. I feel the push to finish in style. I feel that little goblin sitting somewhere near my cerebellum waving his little birch wand like mad (pictured, wand not shown).

I feel like I've had three double espressos and need another.

And it's all me. It's not my boss, it's not the IRS, it's not a performance deadline, it's not a flight to England. It's just me and my brain making me feel like a controlled storm sweeping my creative landscape. /melodrama

So here I go. I'm taking the leap and if all goes well, I'll land sometime next week with something to show for it. That, or I will transform into a molecule of adrenaline. One of the two.