I’m so tired lately. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones and settles in. Part of it is the chronic insomnia I have, but a lot of it is that I ran out of my Adderall before I could get more and my body is telling me what a fool I was to let that happen.
Still, I have things to do. I’ve got to finish my Italian Renaissance dress, start on my husband’s garb, make Christmas presents, and a whole slew of other things. I’m so tired I can’t even think of what I need to do.
Oh yeah, I remember one thing… I have to work today.
Category: Sleep
Beatdown
I’m done. Done. Totally, completely, 1000% done.
Except I’m not. I have more to do, farther to go, deeper to dig. In other words, I’m shit out of luck.
Ok, let me back up a bit.
I’ve been covering for a co-worker who had surgery a week ago, and even though I learned how to do that position a little over a year ago, my training was quick and dirty. Basically, the only backup person for that position quit and I had to step up and dive in. Speed training.
Incomplete speed training.
Yeah. There are huge chunks of aspects of the position that are missing from my knowledge/experience base. Some of the things never came up during that speed training, and despite me pointing this out multiple times it has never been rectified. I literally am the only other person “trained” in this position, and as the past week has demonstrated I am not truly prepared.
I didn’t realize how much stress I was under this past week until this morning. My worsening insomnia, which I had been attributing to just me being me, has most likely been due to this sudden change in work duties. This afternoon, the buildup of stress and strain and pressure came to a head in the form of a massive anxiety attack. During the work day. Full-blown crying-my-eyes-out find-a-place-to-hide-from-reality anxiety attack.
It has been a long, long time since I’ve had an attack that bad while at work. I have to admit, I’m more than a bit ashamed of it. I thought I was past this kind of thing.
Guess not.
Now, work life isn’t my only stressor right now. I have other things going on that are probably not helping matters. Could I cut back on one or more of the non-work activities? Sure. I could. Will I? Probably not too much. Some of my private life things demand a certain degree of responsibility, and some of them involve dear friends who I do not want to disappoint or let down. So I’m going to plow through my off hours just like I’m plowing through the work stress. Will that mean more breakdowns? Probably… but hopefully I can keep any impending meltdowns to times when I can get away and hide my shame.
I’m not sure what I’ll do to destress aside from the date night that my wonderful husband has planned for tomorrow. Work will calm down eventually. I’ll get my personal life sorted to the point where I can function.
I just wish I could fast forward to this stress leveling off.
Soon, though, right? Please?
Drink myself awake
Groggy mornings are the norm for me. I wake up, I stumble around as I make coffee or a Soda Stream energy drink, and I take my pills–including Adderall–to try to wake my lazy body up. Some mornings I’m successful…others, not so much.
This morning seems to be a “not so much” morning.
I’ve been up for an hour and a half (on purpose–today’s an early morning at work), but I’m not quite awake yet. I mean, obviously I’m awake because I’m typing this, but I’m not awake-awake. I keep dozing off sitting straight up at the computer. I’ve had my Adderall. I’m halfway through a liter of energy drink. And I’ve been up for a freaking hour and a half!
If it’s not coffee, it’s energy drink. Every day, even off days. If I don’t get my caffeine “fix” on an off day, I’m sleeping away most of the day, even if I’m busy with stuff. My eyes cross, my lids get heavy, and people ask if I’m okay. Yeah, I’m okay…I’m just about to pass the fuck out back into dreamland.
This makes editing and revising difficult, to say the least. I have been staring at the same few sentences for the past hour, trying to figure out what, if anything, needs to be fixed. I can’t even tell at this point.
Speaking of points, I’ve forgotten what one this post had.
Guess I need more caffeine.
Inescapable slumber
What makes a person extra tired one morning compared to another?
Let’s assume I got the same amount/quality of sleep two nights in a row (hey, it’s possible!). One morning, I wake up normally, with about 15 minutes of grogginess followed by the usual early a.m. what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-time-before-work dilemma. The next, I wake up, doze off, wake up, doze off sitting up at the computer, wake up, find myself clicking “transfer” on the only Clefairy I have in my Poké-thing (yes, I did that), doze, wake up, etc.
This morning was one of the latter mornings. I was able to fend off my cat for a good hour before finally waking up…or rather, not finally…more like gaining full consciousness for the first time of the morning. Then I tried getting on the computer for a while, but I just ended up nodding off so much that I just went back to sleep for a little while. Then, after waking up again, I went into the craft room to work on cosplay–where I promptly fell asleep sitting straight up on the futon. Head full-tilt backwards, mouth hanging open, probably snoring. I gave up on the cosplay project at that point. Clearly I was not functional enough to be operating a sewing machine. I can’t afford a trip to the hospital to have a needle surgically removed from my finger.
Oddly enough, my husband has been experiencing the same phenomenon today. Extreme grogginess even after being awake for several hours. What causes this? He didn’t complain of a bad night’s sleep, so why is he so tired?
I suppose if I wasn’t so sleepy I could research it or something. But I think I’ll just drink my energy drink and be grateful that I had the morning off today.
Visions of Sleep
Early in the morning
Ere the sun has shown his face
My lids feel heavy
My eyes cross paths
So hard to stay awake
A mere hour before I have to get ready
For the busy day ahead
I need to wake up
To be alert
But my eyes have different ideas
They try to force my hand
To make me sleep again
I can’t let them succeed
I can’t give in
I have a job to do
No time for sleep
No time for resting those eyes
Raise those heavy lids
Force the eyes to stop crossing
My lids will meet once again in slumber
But not until the night
Not-So Sweet Dreams
So there I am, trying to behave myself during a Medicare inspection, when the Medicare auditor tells me I have to get an MRI. Okay, seems legit, right?
I go to get my MRI and almost forget that I have my keys in my pocket. Oops. That would’ve been bad. Then I play the waiting game==gotta bide your time until the radiology department decides to let you know what’s what.
I finally call them because it’s getting late and they haven’t called me yet. They tell me I have cancer in my back & I need to come in to the hospital to get it taken care of. Sure, why not? Again, it seems legit.
Once I get to the hospital, I find myself waiting and waiting and waiting to see a doctor. When are they going to have a doctor go over the results of my MRI with me? I decide to go to a nurses’ station and ask whats up with that. Turns out the surgeon had just gotten there, so they took me to another room to discuss my results.
Imagine my surprise when my surgeon was not an oncologist but rather the cataract surgeon that I work with. Totally legit. Apparently they called him in because he ordered the MRI. And he was totally cool with it. He showed me where in my back the cancer was (right in some offshoot of my spine–no biggie) and told me he’d do the surgery.
Some other patient interrupted and came over telling some stupid story about his own cancer experience, talking over the doctor so I couldn’t hear when I was going to have the surgery. I got the impression that it would be soon, but I didn’t know what time exactly. Would I be able to eat anything, or did I have to wait until after the surgery? The surgeon left before I could ask, though, so I tried to ask at the nurses’ station but again they were pretty much useless.
I went off to see my husband & there with him was my best friend Crystal and her family. There were lots of hugs and well wishes, but still I couldn’t eat.
I woke up starving.
Stupid brain.
Double Trouble
Ah, this weekend was so nice. Relaxing.
And too damn short.
I’ve been awake for an hour & a half, but I can barely keep my eyes open. They keep crossing and closing, trying to force me back into slumber. They almost succeeded–almost.
Today it’s back to work, followed by (hopefully) more cosplay progress. I got a decent amount done yesterday, but my back started getting sore (and my hubby needed the power strip from the craft room for some of his cosplay work, so there’s that too). Yeah, yeah, I could’ve taken the strip back when he was done & gotten back to it, but damn I was tired. I think I was asleep before 7:30.
The jacket I started working on yesterday has the front two panels sewn and the back is almost done (not counting lining and such–that comes soon).
Damnit, eyes! I can’t be going back to sleep now!
Anywho, I also got a lot of character development done for the dystopian/sci-fi novel I’ve been working on for ages. This book will definitely be slower going than Whispers of Death, mostly because I’m having a more complicated plot…not to mention the research. I have to figure out what kind of tech we’ll have in a few hundred years…or at least speculate to within a reasonable accuracy. For instance, flying cars? Eh, maybe, maybe not. Bionic implants? That I can see happening. Genetic engineering? Yep, can see that too. And as far as current events unfolding in the ages to come, well….I don’t want to give away too much. 😉
Well, it’s time to make my husband’s coffee and see what the rest of the world is up to this early in the morning. Enjoy your work day!
Sub-standard
Okay, this upcoming three day weekend is much needed.
Last night I dreamed that a patient randomly started to fall face-first out of an exam chair. I mean, she was headed for full faceplant…until I jerked awake with a gasp. Work has finally invaded my subconscious to the point where I’m having semi-nightmares about it. (I don’t consider it a full-blown nightmare because it was more of a shock factor than a fear factor that woke me up…and I was fully aware that it was a dream the second I woke up. Usually nightmares have me really confused when I first wake up from them.)
I also had a weird dream that one of my exes was a serial killer. Hope I don’t have the FBI knocking on my door any time soon to ask questions lol
I keep telling myself that this weekend will help things calm down. I have a trip to Tucson with my husband and some new friends for cosplay and Costco shopping, so that may or may not be relaxing (sometimes even a day trip can wear you out), but Sunday and Monday should be all about cosplay work–except for an Independence Day dinner with the family.
Going to go finish that final belt loop on the Shatterstar pants that I have been procrastinating on due to sheer exhaustion, then I can finally get started on the coat…and learn how to thread and use my serger so I can make the Spandex stuff.
Yeah, I know, the cosplay push will be yet another thing to wear me out…but it’s a change from what I’ve been doing, so that’s a good thing I think. I just gotta keep up on it. Two months. Just two months. Can’t keep letting my physical and mental exhaustion get to me. I’ve got to get these done.
I can do it. I’m determined, just sluggish.
Weird dreams or not, I got this.
Haze
I wake, I shake, I look around
But my focus still cannot be found
I wake, I shake, I blink my eyes
This fuzziness has me surprised
I wake, I shake, I drink caffeine
But it really doesn’t do a thing
I wake, I shake, I feel forlorn
I cannot see this Monday morn
The eyes have it…or do they?
As many of you know (probably from the timing of these posts), I tend to wake up on the early side of early. Sometimes it’s due to my cat being a dick, sometimes it’s weird dreams, and sometimes I just wake up because my body thinks it’s done sleeping.
But is it? I thought my body was done sleeping when I woke up at 2:45, eyes wide open. This morning I keep dozing off at the laptop, hands hovering over the keys, eyes drooping of their own accord. I could put the laptop away and go back to sleep–or rather could have gone back to sleep…now it’s about time to think about getting ready for work anyway. I’ve even had most of an energy drink and my morning Adderall. This will make for a very long day at work today.
It’s weird how I ended up being such an early riser when I used to sleep in as long as possible. It all started when I got a bout of insomnia, and I’d wake up between 1:30 and 3:00 every morning.
Enter Rory, the cat that’s as much a joy in my life as a pain in my ass. He’s a smart cat…sometimes too smart. He taught himself to play fetch. He taught himself that getting in the carrier and going in the car 95% of the time means a trip to visit the other animals at my parents’ house. And he taught himself that I’m “supposed” to be up between 1:30 and 3:00 every morning.
Since we adopted him while I was having my insomnia, he assumed that being up that early was my normal state. When I finally started being able to sleep until “normal” times, he decided that this was not right and proceeded to wake me up every morning between 1:30 and 3:00.
Hence the cat trained me. Thankfully, I now usually don’t wake up until around 2:45 to 3:30, so I guess that’s a bit of an improvement. I go to bed much earlier than I used to, so it kind of balances out. I get roughly 7 hours of sleep a night, even on nights when I have to work super early the next day. Not too shabby. Still, it makes for some long days.
Usually I’m active in the mornings, either writing or sewing or doing some other such semi-productive thing. This morning, however, I just could not muster the energy to walk across the apartment to the craft room to sew on the final touches of my husband’s next pair of cosplay pants. All I have to do is hand-sew some belt loops on (I’d machine-sew them, but my husband tends to be rough on belt loops and I’d rather not have one of them rip off in the middle of a con–best to sew them on by hand where I can put extra stitches in places that a sewing machine just can’t get to), so one would think I’d be eager to get them finished so I can move on to the next thing. One would think.
Since I’ve started typing this I’ve woken up a bit. My eyes no longer droop, and I’m just about ready to start getting ready for the day.
Bring it on, world!