Helping or hurting?

Thursday: 30 minutes sitting
Friday: 45 minutes sitting
Saturday: 45 minutes sitting

My zafu came in the mail (YAY), so I jumped back to 45-minute meditation sessions, but I am still having a hard time. This morning’s session felt like torture, to be blunt, and I don’t want to start associating my meditation time with negative emotions, let alone torture.

I really think it’s because I’m working so much. Is working myself into the ground just incompatible with a meditation practice? Because I need to work myself into the ground right now—it’s kind of what I signed up for, career-wise, and it’s only for another week and a half. So my question is this: Is meditation actually a rest for my brain, and therefore helping, or is it just adding to the workload already going on up there, and therefore hastening my spiral into insanity?

I gave some serious thought to cutting WAY back on meditation time until after my deadline, just to have an extra half-hour a day to work. But then I realized I hadn’t considered the option of giving up Twitter instead, which is probably also a half-hour of my day, and which also leaves me extremely agitated. So I guess I’ll do that first.