Yesterday, I had to deal with another issue in one of our school group chats. Nothing new, really. I've dealt with GC issues before: misunderstandings between parents, complaints, questions that have already been answered five more times, and conversations that could have ended twenty messages ago but somehow developed nine more lives.

I've dealt with worse. The PTA officers' GC alone has given me enough material for an entire book. Possibly a trilogy.

But for some reason, yesterday's issue exhausted me. It wasn't necessarily the worst or even the most stressful issue I've dealt with. And yet, by the time it was over, I felt completely drained.

Then I thought about everything else that was happening at the same time.

I was working and trying to beat an article deadline, so my brain was already occupied with writing, researching, checking things, and staying focused. Meanwhile, we were having solar panels installed at home, which meant hours of drilling and hammering in the background. It was the kind of noise you think you've successfully tuned out until it finally stops and you realize how much energy you spent just trying to ignore it.

On top of that, I was also arranging lunch for an entire class for an upcoming school activity. That meant checking the poll, figuring out what everyone wanted, getting prices, coordinating orders, thinking about payments, and making sure everything would be ready on time.

And yes, the lunch I was arranging was for the very same class GC where the conflict was happening.

So somewhere between trying to finish an article, listening to drilling and hammering around the house, organizing meals for an entire class, and dealing with an increasingly stressful conversation in the GC, my brain apparently decided it had enough.

The funny thing is, I kept thinking, Why am I so tired? I've handled far worse than this.

And I have. But maybe that was the wrong way to look at it.

We tend to judge stress by the size of the problem in front of us. If we survived something worse before, we think something smaller shouldn't affect us as much. But our brains don't encounter problems in isolation. Whatever happens gets added to everything we're already carrying at that moment.

On another day, that GC issue might have been completely manageable. Yesterday, it arrived when my attention was already being pulled in several directions.

There was the concentration required to meet a deadline. There was the mental load of organizing something for thirty-something students and their parents. There was the constant sensory interruption of construction happening around me. Then there was the GC, which required an entirely different kind of attention.

Because dealing with conflict in a group chat isn't simply reading messages and typing replies. You're reading tone while controlling your own. You're trying to understand what someone actually means, separating facts from assumptions, deciding what needs to be answered and what should probably be left alone. You're thinking about how your response might be interpreted not only by the person you're replying to, but by everyone else silently reading the conversation.

Then, after carefully composing a response, you're supposed to switch tabs and return to an article as though your brain hadn't just spent the last several minutes doing emotional gymnastics.

Meanwhile, someone starts drilling again.

At some point, apparently, my brain said, Jones, quota na tayo...

That's when it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't unusually impatient. Maybe the GC wasn't unusually exhausting either.

Maybe I was just overstimulated.

Too much noise. Too many conversations. Too many decisions. Too many responsibilities requiring completely different parts of my attention, happening all at once.

And perhaps that's why, when everything finally settled, I didn't necessarily want to sleep. I just wanted no more input. No notifications. No questions. No decisions. No one needing an answer from me. Not even music playing in the background.

Just silence.

I used to think moments like that meant I was being antisocial or that my patience had suddenly become unusually short. Now, I'm beginning to think that sometimes, it's simply my brain telling me, You've processed enough for today.

Being capable of handling something doesn't mean we have unlimited capacity to handle it at any given moment.

I've handled worse GC issues. I've worked under tighter deadlines. I've organized bigger things. I've survived noisy days.

But apparently, when you put all of them together on the same day, that's a different story.

So maybe the lesson isn't always to ask, Why was something I've already handled before suddenly so exhausting?

Maybe the better question is, What else was I already carrying when it happened?

I handled it. Everything needed to get done got done. I was just really, really tired afterward.

And maybe that's the point. Sometimes exhaustion isn't a sign that we couldn't handle something. Sometimes it's simply the cost of having handled too many things at once.

Maybe I wasn't being dramatic after all. Maybe my brain was just full. And honestly, fair enough.