If it KILLS me

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when the title of this post goes through my head all the time with regard to work. I have such an overwhelming amount of work to do, especially with administration but also research and teaching, that I work at a frantic pace every day. Part of this is probably my own fault; I'm doing more than the bare minimum, but I feel like the bare minimum is too risky to my career; plus, the minimum makes me feel like a gigantic loser.

Also, I feel like I'm in a race with my body. As I work on proposals, articles, administrative memos and other documents, teaching materials, etc., I can see, below the screen, in my peripheral vision, those little protrusions poking and shaking my abdomen. There's so much stuff I must knock out SOON, before the fetal boy gets here, even if the deadlines of these projects are a few months away. For example, tonight I'm revising a draft of a brief article that's due in mid-March. I intend to finish it tomorrow -- if it kills me. Then this weekend, I'll be working on two projects due in early April...and so on. I don't ever want to be that person who holds an entire project up.

I don't know anything about whitewater rafting, but I suspect it could be analogous. Isn't it true that sometimes your raft gets swept into currents, and you have to paddle like crazy to get out of the current immediately, because if you don't, it'll take you and hurl you over the edge of Niagara Falls?