Stress problem

I concur greatly about leaving work and home as separate entities.

One of the things I had to do in China was to separate them.

I remember my first year being constantly full of work (and stress). If I wasn't teaching (or doing stuff related like making lesson plans), I was either grading essays (try 300+ per week for maybe three months straight), going to English discussions that were similar to how I handled class (constantly being asked how to improve one's English, considering having to decipher what is being said, constantly having to lead the conversation and get people to talk, etc), going to lunches/dinners (which quite a few times were actually meetings in disguise in which they'd try to give us more work), or going to activities in which once again I had the same situation as the classes I taught.

By the end of the first year, i was totally wiped out and while we were suppose to get a break for the summer and even stated we needed the break, we were given/accepted even more English-teaching work.

Eventually, I had to put my foot down because I knew if I kept this up, I would be stressed out and go nuts. So this meant turning down some English chats, turning down teaching extra classes (although in truth this didn't work out so well....blah) both within and out of the university, being a bit more cautious of school-related surprise dinners (that many times would result in work-related talk and even result in the distribution of more work), and turning down some other activities. Overall, this meant separating the two into separate items and when I'm at home, not thinking about work-related or doing work-related things.

In order to further separate the two, I did things that helped me NOT think about work during that time, such as watching movies, making food, and playing games. It really did help.

Jam it back in, in the dark.