As mentioned last week, the grocery store run to restock on melatonin didn't actually happen. Regretfully, as it turns out, because by the end of the week, the short supply of sleep apparently started to catch up with me in strange ways.
There's the usual "don't want to get up in the morning" thing, which is hard enough to overcome for me on the best days, and the whole desperate need of coffee to kickstart the brain, which goes along with not being a morning person anyway... but apparently by Saturday, while I wasn't feeling particularly tired or cranky, I was completely stressed out and didn't even realize it.
Saturday afternoon, lunch time. I wandered by the technical coach on duty's desk on my way out the door to pick up lunch, and decided to ask her for some advice on an escalated issue (read: multiple supervisor calls over the past couple of weeks) that I'd gotten stuck with. My supervisor overheard the conversation and decided to ask me to give her the basics so she could help clarify things somewhat, as it was partially due to an error on the part of one of our representatives and partially due to the customer's mistaken assumption, and the customer was expecting quite an expensive resolution. At one point, about 20 minutes after I paused to ask for a quick bit of advice, I realized that I was almost out of time for lunch, and my supervisor, bless her heart, asked me why on earth I was sitting at her desk talking about work on my lunch break instead of taking the time for myself like I ought to.
And yeah, for no apparent reason, I got tears in my eyes, and realized that I was completely overwhelmed.
It took me nearly 10 minutes to get back to some semblance of control, and then I was ordered to go get lunch and take my full 30 minutes, then send my supervisor the particulars so she could follow up on it, and let it go for pity's sake. Apparently I am sometimes a little too conscientious for my own good.
Truthfully I was still a little shaky during my lunch break, but I got through the rest of the afternoon without incident and sent my boss an obsessively long e-mail with the details of said escalated issue, at which she half-jokingly chided me for telling her too much information. She's very much a TL;DR person.
Got home Saturday night after work, and set out to write my Sunday column for the Word shared blog. And realized the stress was still getting to me, because I had a complete mental block. What I really needed was a good night's sleep, but I couldn't let myself procrastinate my way out of that commitment, so I pushed through until I got an idea, ran with it, and subsequently collapsed.
Yeah, I realize I forgot to link to the post on Sunday. It's not my most inspired column yet, but for those who are curious, here it is:
Sunday I really wanted to sleep in, but was committed to working the church nursery. Two-plus hours with three toddlers later, I was thoroughly drained. I had three choices: 1) a Sunday afternoon nap, which might just throw off my sleep schedule further... 2) Coffee, which would perk me up enough to accomplish a few things I wanted to do, but of which I was wary based on last weekend's zero-sleep debacle.... or 3) Iced tea with lunch, then try to wind down for bed at a decent hour.
I'd tried to swing by the grocery store for that much-procrastinated restock on melatonin but the Super Bowl pre-party shopping was absolutely insane, so I decided on option 3, which didn't so much work as planned. I felt like a zombie most of the afternoon, got nothing accomplished, perked up a little toward evening, tried to go to bed but couldn't shut off my brain enough to sleep well, and ended up calling in first thing Monday morning to reschedule my overtime hours to Tuesday.
Yesterday I finally said "enough is enough" and went to the store to restock on melatonin, as well as a few other things I needed. Yeah, I've got enough to last me over a year now. I know some friends and family who've tried it and didn't really think it did much for them, but apparently I can't do without it right now. I popped one of those babies last night 'round 8:30 PM, and by 9:30 I was sound asleep.
And woke up at 2:20 AM feeling extremely refreshed. Too good for being the middle-of-the-damn-night, to be honest, and I knew I'd be miserable without more sleep by the time I needed to be at work at 7, so I tossed and turned a while and managed to drop off again... AND... overslept, missing my rescheduled overtime shift. Err, whoops!
Meh. I'm sure to get hassled a bit for not doing my overtime two weeks in a row, but after my emotional stress-ball scene on Saturday, I think my supervisor will probably be inclined to cut me some slack.
Today, I'm feeling good. I feel really rested for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm short-circuiting the procrastination cycle on the shared blog by doing my reading today and starting the idea-drafting process. And I'm going to enjoy this last off-day before my 40 hour work week starts again tomorrow.
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Posted by: snapback new era | May 19, 2012 at 01:01 AM
Vielen Dank für einen anderen großen Blog. Wo sonst bekommen Sie diese Informationen in schriftlicher Form so vollständig aufzuhetzen? Ich schon immer gesucht haben.
Posted by: mbt chaussures | May 19, 2012 at 01:03 AM
Où d'autre pouvez-vous obtenir cette information sous forme écrite aussi complètement incitent? J'ai toujours voulu m haben.I suis sûr que de se faire harceler un peu pour ne pas faire mes heures supplémentaires deux semaines d'affilée, mais après ma scène le stress émotionnel balle le samedi, je pense que mon superviseur sera probablement enclin à me couper un peu de mou .
Posted by: ralph lauren chaussures | May 28, 2012 at 01:05 AM