I completely feel like crying right now. My oldest son has been at a three-week Academy at the university (about five minutes from my door) since Saturday. Every day he calls me and cries. We are both miserable. But today, I was also mad. So, when he called me all teary-voiced a few minutes ago, I read him the riot act. I told him that this cannot continue. I told him that I was angry that he was wasting his time and making both of us miserable. I said I couldn’t see that he was doing anything to improve his life there and that he had one foot in that world and one in mine and he needed to get both feet there he said the time was going by slowly and I said, “That is because you are miserable.” And I told him that he would never again be with a group of kids he could have so much in common with and he was sitting in his room reading. I told him I wished he didn’t have any books there at all so he’d get out of his room and go and talk to someone, but he is acting like talking to someone and saying hello is the hardest thing in the world. I told him that I am not going to let him come home. That is not an option. So for him to be miserable for three weeks is a waste of three weeks of his life.

When I paused to take a breath, his younger brothers wanted to talk to him, and then they hung up. I called his dorm room back, and he was gone for lunch. So that was that. So, of course, now I am still miserable, and I know that he is miserable too. What I hope is that this little tirade kicks him into gear a bit and makes him snap out of his self-imposed isolation. There are tons of activities for the kids there, some of them mandatory, some of them optional. As far as I can tell, he isn’t signing up for many of the optional activities. In fact, he is talking about using his free passes to get out of some of the mandatory activities during the last week.

To make matters worse, I have a to-do list as long as my arm today. There are projects I have to finish, contracts I have to sign and put in the mail, bills to pay, interview questions to write, people to contact, and I have to be clear, focused, and razor sharp or these things won’t get done. Instead, I want to crawl into my bed with a package of oreo cookies, watch a chick flick, and have a good cry.

I called two friends to vent and that helped. So has writing this. But I still feel a bit like I need to jump out of my own skin.

How do you get work done when your personal life is crashing down around your ears?