whoops!

My jaw is where my stress goes. I clench tightly.

I have a night guard. It helps protect my teeth, and when I'm really stressed, I even wear it during the day. One of my friends shakes her head and says, "I don't know HOW you wear that thing, especially during the day!" Most people, so my dentist tells me, don't like their night guards, but I LOVE MINE. (Another friend confirms that she hates hers and usually finds she's taken it out in the middle of the night and thrown it across the room. Hrm.)

Anyway, this crazy project I took on at work, um, it caused some stress. The last few months, I've been working steadily and not too crazily--well, except for that paper I had to get done more quickly than I wanted, but it wasn't too bad.

Over all, my jaw felt better. Not 100%, but not too bad. But now this project, my jaw HURTS. Pretty much within 2 days of working on this project it hurt as bad as it did when I was under tremendous stress before. And! Bonus! Now, I have some numbness in my left cheek. I'm sure this is stress related from all the clenching. Whoops.

I will see if it resolves in a few days after the craziness has subsided. I've done a lot of work in the last few days and got the ball rolling and now, it's off to another organization so I might be nearly done.

It's good to be almost done. I really do feel the effects of crazy stress. I'm exhausted and the numbness (residual from the TM) I have is significantly worse right now. I like doing these kinds of projects, but I know the insane-ness of them IS NOT good for me. (It's not good for any one.) Okay... I won't say yes to anything insanely crazy for a while again.