Diary of an Overachiever?

It occurs to me that I don't write about myself...well, ever, really...and given that it is going to be a lazy, reflective kind of Sunday around here it seems a good enough time.

The past few weeks have been really busy. Wrapping up final projects--20 page paper in 2 weeks? Statistical analysis and two exams to boot?--oh, and client budget reprojections due the same day at Stats final, and really, why not sign up for that 6.2 mile race while you're at it? But the day before the race make sure you are the only volunteer who agrees to stand out in the pouring rain and wind at the animal adoption event trying to get folks off the street to come in and meet the cats, cook dinner with your 4 girlfriends, and go to a board advisory council meeting for a small non-profit in the city. All of which has been crammed into the last 2 weeks alone. I just *do* all this stuff, and it doesn't feel like "overachieving" because I honestly love doing all of it.

A friend of mine often calls me an overachiever, joking in part because he's somewhat the same way himself, and to be honest I've never quite known what to make of that. I always think of overachievers as people who wear their accomplishments on their sleeves and won't ever shut up about their Harvard GPA, work in Guatemala, or whatever. And I don't think I've ever really been like that. I always wonder if those boasting people do what they do just so they can brag about it or because they really enjoy it.

I think some people get energy from the things they do, and others lose energy from it, and we all handle it our own way. Which is not to say that I don't need copious amounts of quiet time to recharge or that I don't run myself into the ground sometimes, but in the process it's a great time. I am ambitious and I do have very high standards for myself. Maybe I cram it all in because I want to advance faster, or maybe it's just because the more things on my plate the more I seem to thrive on it. I'm not sure, but regardless I don't like the overachiever badge very much.

The next three weeks are a little more on the downtime scale for me: hiking out west first week of June, then my birthday, then off to Geneva and Amsterdam for summer courses and then it's July. I'm in the full job-search mode at the moment, and I hope when I come back from hiking there will be some promising interviews waiting. In the meantime, I'll keep running and volunteering and have a million other little projects going because, in the end, I'm creating my life the way I want to, and there's a certain joy to that.