Categories: decisions, work, sleep, tired
Date: 15 January 2011 11:05:22
My New Year's resolution.
It's been the strangest few weeks. I'd spent Christmas/New Year raging against the Whole World, feeling completely isolated, and unable to do anything - talk to anyone, face anyone, write much. I was as tired at the end of the day as at the beginning, though I'd managed to drag myself into action on a couple of fronts, but basically spent the time in a deep fog of "Why am I bothering ?" and almost total inertia. [I know - raging and being in a fog and almost total inertia don't sound as if they should go together, but in Japes' world, they do!] To the point of worrying myself enough to wonder if a trip to the doctor might not be a bad idea.
Last Tuesday morning was back to work morning. I'd calmed down enough to be rational in the conversations I needed to have, and had my tattered, but just about workable professional mode wrapped around me.
I found myself completely thrown by the news that morning on the Ship of Fools, I never usually log on before work, so what made me do so is beyond me - other than it gave me a sense of perspective back, along with a resolve I was taking no more crap, I wasn't the only one who needed this ridiculous way of getting paid sorted.
It took until yesterday to get a definitive answer on the work front. It's satisfactory for now, but not a long term solution. Satisfactory enough for me to remain in the job for the rest of the academic year. Not satisfactory enough to make me want to remain in this type of work and with a long commute for longer than that! I've done the commuting for a year or more longer than I wanted, anyway. It's too much, both financially and physically. Not only was I worried enough about how I didn't bounce back during the holidays, as I normally do, but someone who knows me really well, who saw me at the lowest point in the whole process, earlier this week, was also threatening to march me off to the doctors, asked all kinds of awkward questions about whether or not I was eating properly (I am, before you also enquire!) sleeping properly, (um... well... OK...) and in short gave me the kind of lecture I've been known to give my students.
Several of whom I had a very memorable chat with this week! Which boiled down to the fact we recognised in the other similar ways of coping with the crap life throws at us. I was explaining I was being the bitch from hell in my private life at the moment, and saving all my niceness for work, as dumping all the nastiness on those I worked with just wasn't on... but doing the same to my friends wasn't on either, and so I was isolating myself, and making myself feel worse, and really struggling with how to get myself to break down the isolating barriers. Well, the floodgates opened, (and they offered to come and beat up anyone who was hassling me... I declined, but was deeply touched by the offer as I understood the spirit in which it was made!) and I probably got more real work done with the lads in that hour than in the previous term.
I'm still really, really tired. I love the work I do, but the stress surrounding it is becoming too much. There are glimmers of hope though, and that will do for now.