Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher

So, I was going to post my metaphor, but I can't find it.  I must have accidentally erased it at some point. I'll try and find it and post it soon. 

I feel worn out.  I am attempting to function on four hours of sleep, because our eight month old kept waking up crying, which would then set off our two year old.  Once Joel would be asleep, Micah would wake up. It was an awful cycle.  I'm living off a sugar high and a steady dose of caffeine.  I'm not eating right.  I'm not excercising.  I haven't prayed lately.  Or read for fun.  So, I am standing at the edge of burn out. 

The problem is not that life is too hard or that I am doing things I hate.  It's not like my job as a bagger at the grocery store.  I'm not reeling in rows of carts in flaming hot Phoenix summers.  Instead, I am doing what I love.  I am spending time with my family, working on projects with my students and going full force with my master's degree.  Yet, there is that sense that in living life to the fullest, I am too full of life.  It is like I am at a buffet line and they are serving the best cuts of steak and I just devoured a two pound hunk of meat rather than slowly savoring a nice meal. 

I know, I know, I should get more sleep.  I should eat better.  I should carve out time for myself.  The best advice is probably the most trite.  The problem is that the buffet is just too good and I'm like an eight year old on Halloween with a plastic pumpkin packed with every candy imaginable.  It's simply too hard to figure out what needs to go.  Sure, there are the strange hard candies that are supposed to be chewy (they come in orange or black paper).  In my case, the strange candies and the sour candies would be things like staff meetings and reformatting lesson plans.  Yet, the vast majority of life is filled with M&Ms, Snickers, Heath bars and Reese's Pieces. How can I say no?