Exhaustion

I never knew what exhaustion was until this weekend. I had four shifts rostered over a short period of time (less than 48 hours) - Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning & afternoon, and super early monday. And 3 of those shifts were extended with no warning because of delays, cancellations and sick workmates. I was so exhausted that the only reason I went on Monday was because I thought it would only be for four hours, unfortunately someone called in sick so I was asked to extend my hours. Initially I did not want to (at all) I felt like a zombie, my eyes were heavy and sore, I couldn't think properly, and trying to deal with people seemed like too massive an effort to do anything. I have never been so tired in my life.

On top of the excessive number of shifts was my weird insomnia, which pops up on an occasional basis. It shows up on a random basis, and I have not been able to figure out a reason for it, though I have many theories, including magnesium deficiency, or stress but it is usually that I will go to sleep with no problem and then wake up in the early hours of morning, tired, but unable to return to sleep. I have tried lavender oil (that helped somewhat - I still woke early but felt more rested when I had to get out of bed and less zombie-like), as well as magnesium spray, exercise during the day, cutting out chocolate, not much helped.

According to the Chinese body clock, 1-3am is the time for the liver to be most active, and 3-5am is the time for the lungs. I'm not sure if I'm awake because my liver has an excessive amount of work to do - but you would think in that case that my body would most likely want me unconscious, not awake and fidgety.

Saturday night I went to bed at 9pm as I had to get up at 5am - this should have given me a lovely 8 hours sleep, except that I woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep for 3 hours. And no point trying to have a nap during the day - well I did try it, I couldn't sleep. It was only slightly restful, probably because I had set my alarm for 30 minutes before I had to get up and go again. So the second night I decided to go to bed at 7pm, in the hopes that even if I woke at 2am, I would still have had 7 good hours sleep. However, when I woke up and checked the time it was only 11:40pm and I was awake the rest of the night until 3:30am when my alarm went off.

I'm still exhausted even though its Tuesday. I went to bed at 8pm last night and woke at 1:30pm, but surprisingly felt much better than yesterday. I still had to get up at 4am for work though. I was complaining to people about it at work, but some of my workmates also have crazy numbers of early shifts and late shifts, so there is very little sympathy, but at least they all get it. It did turn into a little bit of a "Who's got it harder" session though. I truly believe this is the reason why there is so much sickness going around at the moment - because people are not coping with the insanity of so many mixed up shifts.

It used to be that you would have a few early shifts, then a few late shifts, then days off. But lately its more like 7 earlies 1 late, or early, late, early, early, late, late, early. Or what I had over the weekend, late shift, then a split shift, then a super early shift, followed by two more very early long shifts - that doesn't help either - coz you just can't get proper rest because you have to get up early the next morning as well. I really hope the next roster is better than this one, because I feel like I'm dying right now.

Anger Management at the Gym

So its been 3 months since I joined a gym, I signed up not long after I got back from Europe, feeling like I needed to do something for myself. I was going for a while feeling like I wasn't making much progress & just kind of mucking around, having fun, so I finally got up the nerve to go talk to the manager about how I was feeling - there are lots of personal trainers there, but they're all guys, and I feel a bit intimidated by them, but the manager is female, so I felt more comfortable talking to her, even though she did look a bit bewildered when I asked to talk to her. So she set me up a second personal trainer session - which was excellent. He gave me a really hard workout, which was good, and the next day my muscles felt very sore and achey, which is just what I wanted. Since then I've been bouncing back and forth between the first and second workouts I was given, doing whatever I feel like on the day and including parts of both.

But one thing I've added myself which I'm really liking is I borrowed some boxing gloves off a friend & have been having a great time laying into the punching bag at the gym. Its really good as an anger management tool, I think, it always makes me feel greatly relieved by the end of it, especially if I visualise whoever has been annoying me lately on the punching bag and me hitting their face, lol. Not that I would ever hit a person in real life, but it does great relief to my feelings to hit the punching bag instead. I highly recommend it. Get your own gloves though, coz you don't know whos been sweating into the gym ones.

Swift changes

Well its been a while since I wrote on here, but it feels like a lot has happened in a very short time & I'm a little stunned & astonished by how quickly change has come upon me (unsought and unasked for). I had sort of a timeline in my head that I thought I was going to follow along with quite nicely, plodding along, but all of a sudden it feels like a dozen waves have crashed over my head, sucking me out of what I thought was going to happen and pulling me along according to their own little timeline.

I had a good talk to a friend today who helped me see things in perspective, it was almost like she knew what was about to happen.

She said that for me the way I grow and change and learn, is to have lots of different experiences in lots of different places. Ever since she has known me, I keep shifting from place to place, or changing jobs, or changing my life completely and moving around. Whereas for the past several years I've been in one place, and one job and I've gotten very comfortable and happy, and in a routine, and I like the way things are, so that when I get told to move on to the next thing, I don't want to, because I'm very happy where I am, thank you very much, and I see no reason why things shouldn't carry on exactly as they are, indefinately. She said but thats not the way for me to grow, that I should embrace the change and just go with it.

She said its like when you learn to surf and you don't know if you want to go in the water, its quite scary and daunting and you're not sure if you can paddle hard enough to catch the wave, and then you're there in the water, waiting for the wave that you're going to catch, you don't know which one it is so you keep waiting and looking, but then when you finally do, you catch it, and you feel exhilarated. You look over and all your friends & family are on the beach cheering you on, and then you're really happy that you took the plunge and did it. She said later I will look back and wonder how things would've been different if I hadn't done it, but that I will be so glad that I did.

She also said she would slap me if I didn't do it, lol. While she was talking I almost got the impression that things were not going to go according to the schedule that I wanted, they were going to happen much faster.

When I got home, I got some news, and yes, things are happening much faster than I imagined. Its quite scary but I think I just have to take a deep breath and go with it. Wowsa.