Timing is everything

I find myself in the fortunate position of having a few too many opportunities this fall. I notoriously over-schedule myself and am overly optimistic about just how much time I'll have to accomplish everything that interests me. So here's the list and coinciding dilemma - my friend Paul needs me to TA for his sampling class (I'm pretty much already committed to this one, probably about 8-10 hours a week, on average), the intro classes also need a grader for all the labs (I'm pretty much already committed to this one too, though it's a big question mark as to how time consuming it will be - at first glance it's a big job (a couple hundred homeworks a week) but they're changing things up this year and doing some fancy-schmancy online grading thing and my job will actually be to create answer keys and post them to blackboard and make the online technology do the grading. not really sure how it's supposed to work yet, could easily become a technological nightmare and time suckage. on the plus side, I don't have to hold office hours. on the minus side, I'll be the one everyone hates.). Ok, so those are the commitments. Well, plus I'll probably (almost certainly) be taking one class (to wrap up my human rights certificate, so no math, but heavy on the reading and writing) and then there's that whole dissertation thing. Then there's the gymnastics thing - Karen definitely wants me to keep coaching in the fall, and given how much fun I'm having right now, I'd really like to too. Then there are the endless other varying TA jobs that need to be covered and random consulting projects, big and small...currently my funding is still up in the air (eek!) so my impulse is to make sure I have enough hourly wage jobs lined up to piece together at least as much money as my stipend currently pays (which runs out in either August or September, I forget). But I'm afraid of getting myself into the same position as last year when I really felt like I was so tied up in teaching and coursework that I wasn't spending nearly enough time doing research. And although I'd like to be more laid back about my timeline to graduation, I know that if I look back and feel like I 'used up' a lot of research time doing random odd jobs (most of which will, admittedly, hopefully, help me to get employed, someday) I'm going to regret that. I also know that no matter how much I'd like to believe that having less money to go out means that I will spend more time doing research, all it really means is that I spend more time being stressed out and trying to come up with ways to make more money. Sigh. In reality I know that I do not yet have enough information to make any decisions, but having just come out of a meeting with my advisor during which we were discussing all these things I needed to get them out of my head and onto the page. Now if only I could convince myself not to think about them until a few more things get nailed down...