Just Woke Up Panicking at 4:30 am

[AsktheAges]

I've bitten off more than I can chew for the next week and now I can't back out. I don't know how I do these things to myself. I don't know what to do. I have something huge to present and perform out of town on Friday and I'm not sure if I can get everything ready, I have two lectures to give, I want to put together a lot of notes to send to someone I'm tutoring privately (partly because I feel like the last lesson didn't go that great because I was under-prepared).

The thing is, I could have made this easier for myself. I didn't need to perform entire pieces at this event. However, now I've made arrangements and other people are taking a lot of trouble.

[AsktheAges]

OK. It's not 100% too late to back out a little from my original performance plan. I only made tech arrangements yesterday. I can call today and modify things and see how flexible the situation is and how much the organizer actually needs to do. My friend and organizer of the event may be very frustrated with me though. He's used to dealing with my anxiety/panic but I think it will be aggravating when it's directly impacting him like this.

[AsktheAges]

I think this is my problem, generally: I plan things based on an ideal situation in my head, without taking into account the reality of everything that's involved. I interpret my initial excitement as a sign that my plan will be completely do-able and feel confident at the moment. Then when the reality actually conflicts with my initial feeling, there is a cognitive dissonance that leads to panic. Seems like the sort of thing I should have outgrown by now though.

[AsktheAges]

Turns out that everything's OK and what is expected of me is actually much less than what I was thinking of doing.:P