I’m not sure how much of this is reflected in my last few posts but my life is really insane at the moment. The pace with which I’m going through my days and the amount of stuff that I have to do within each 24-hour pocket boggles my mind. It’s no wonder that, on top of the weekend vacations that I’ve been taking, the weekday work schedule, gym schedule and friend dates have really done a number on me physically and mentally. I’m exhausted! And though most nights I plop into bed thankful for having had such a full, fun, crazy day, lately this exhaustion has become borderline unhealthy.
Work has been really busy these last few weeks. I’m juggling many new responsibilities and have been mentally stretched in many different directions. The days fly by much too quickly and I’m moving too fast to have time to feel stressed or to complain. Some days, however, I hit to-do-list paralysis. It usually comes to me when I’m sitting at my desk, thinking through my mental list of urgent action items, when all of a sudden the screen turns blurry, everything moves in slow motion and a strange calm enters me. I like to think of it as “the calm before the storm”. “The storm” in this case is the risk of mental breakdown.
Last week, I had one of these moments. It was 5.30pm, everyone was pinging me at work, I hadn’t had any time at my desk all day, I had been running in and out of meetings for nearly 7 hours straight and I was physically exhausted from lack of sleep. All it took was one final trigger of stress/bad news and I nearly lost it. I sat there, staring at my screen, IM boxes popping up one after the other. All I could do was take a deep breath, close my laptop, put on my coat and walk out the door. I didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t even pack up my bag. I just up and left – with my Tube pass, my wallet and my cell phone. That was it for the night. No more work.
And what did I do to bring myself back into the world? I called my Mom, I cried, I took a deep breath, I laughed with C, I went to the gym, I took a long hot shower. Another day done. Finally.
Life isn’t always a perfect daily dream. And that’s ok.
