So Christmas is coming, which is very, very exciting. I can’t wait to be home for all the festivities, food and family! But before I can enjoy that, I have to endure the last week of university.
Don’t get me wrong, I am thoroughly enjoying my time at university, but this week is going to be hard. If it wasn’t enough that I was excited for Christmas, I have two performances as part of my Drama degree and a presentation to do for my Special Educational Needs and Inclusion degree. It’s a joint honors course, so working out how it all works is confusing me!
I haven’t done any drama on stage for more than a year, so that in itself is making me very nervous, and combining that with the stress of trying to get the last parts of a presentation together, I am already ticcing like crazy! Add a dash of not sleeping, and I am feeling a painful week coming up.
The feeling of dread for this week will hopefully decline as I battle on with it, and I’m also trying to remember all the little things I used to do when my tics were bad at stressful points of school. I don’t really remember having any specific coping mechanisms.
I do have a playlist on my iPod that I used to use when I was out and about which were all slow, calming songs from musicals so I would concentrate on the slow tempo and what part of the story was being told to distract myself from ticcing and let it all out at another point.
I think the best thing that helped me when at school was the escape I got when performing, which was A LOT! I even managed to pick a song where I could use the intense excitement I would feel before a tic to give a ridiculous amount of energy to the performance. Seriously, if it was socially acceptable to wander round belting out this song I would. So much fun AND tic management. Lucky me!
Here’s a link of me performing the song. It’s called My Party Dress, and this wasn’t my best vocal performance of it but I think it gets across the idea of how good this song was for using up energy!
I am glad to know that at least when I’m performing the short play I’m doing this week, I should be tic-free — even if it means my tics are more intense at night!
I am going to enjoy this last week at university, despite the extra stress I will inevitably have, and hopefully by this time next week all my Christmas shopping will be done! I might as well use up my sleepless nights on something productive! ;)
