Tag Archives: stressed

No time for a time-out

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I spent this weekend cleaning and organizing at my house because we’re doing some moving. My grandparents are staying downstairs, and my parents, sister, and I are moving some of our stuff out of storage and into here (and vice versa). I feel like I got absolutely nothing accomplished, especially since I got none of the work that is coming out of my ears done. I did get to see Ciana, my niece, for a little. I took the cutest picture of Mike holding her. I so wish I could post it here. It’s proof that he’s going to be an awesome dad (although, when she wouldn’t stop crying, he passed her to me with a “Here ya go!” and left the scene pretty quickly, hahaha).

Tomorrow is my prep for the colonoscopy I’m having Wednesday. It feels so weird to say that; usually it’s elderly or middle-aged people who get them done, not almost twenty-two-year-olds. I’m mostly nervous about tomorrow, at the moment, because I won’t be able to eat anything but clear, not red, liquids and Jell-O (again, no red). I’m hypoglycemic, so this is a scary thing for me. I really don’t want to spend one day nauseous all day and then the next day on the toilet all day, but here we are. I still don’t know what time my procedure is, either, so I have to call them and find out.

I’m going to miss two days of work, which is going to put me two days behind, and then Thursday is going to be really crazy: business meeting early in the morning, part-time job, writers’ group, and softball practice. Why can’t I seem to break this nasty habit of taking on too much? These are all things I want to do (except for the two jobs), but the worst part is that I don’t even have time to write anything to bring to my writers’ group.

I need a time-out.

Two jobs too many

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Today sucked. I’m under so much pressure, between both jobs, that I’m now at a point where I’m teetering on the edge of burning out and every. little. thing sends me spiraling into a five-minute breakdown. I say five minutes because I freak out and then I go into Stubborn Old Man Meets Bruce Lee Action Mode. I’m not sure how much longer I can manage both jobs, and here’s why.

During the day, I work 12 to 4 at my part-time job, doing web design and development, and social media marketing for a local newspaper. While I’m there, my laptop, hard drives, thumb drives, and other side business paraphernalia chill at my home office. So basically, if something goes wrong with one of my side business clients’ sites, my hands are tied until I can get home.

Today, a client’s site completely shut down because of a PHP script I’d installed that was supposed to redirect the site to a lite version if the browser is a mobile browser. Instead, the script committed hari kari and tried to make the site redirect on regular browsers — the browser you’d use on your PC/Mac, such as Firefox. So the site just pretty much got stuck, and it was all up to me to fix it. At the time, I didn’t know it was the script; all I’d been told was that the site “wasn’t working.”

Meanwhile, I had promised to do something really important for someone after work, so my hands were completely tied and so I did what all grownups do: I smoked a bunch of cigarettes and tried to ignore the fact that I was teetering closer and closer to burnout, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t ignore it anymore and I had my five minutes.

Then, the problem solver in me — the Bruce Lee of problem solvers — punched the crybaby in the face and got down to business.

I’m starting to feel more like Tara every day.

I realized something, though. I can’t keep up this two job thing much longer. I really can’t. Most days, I go into my part-time job and I’m too fried to give it much more than 60%. That is not good, nor is it acceptable. I should be able to go in there and give social media optimization advice without having to mull simple things over for twenty minutes before I can respond to a simple Facebook-related question. I should be able to knock out custom WordPress themes within a week or two — not weeks and weeks. I know I need to put more into it, but I’m so overwhelmed and so thinly spread that I’m just not motivated enough to do what I need to get done. Sometimes I just sit and stare at the screen because I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do to get something done, as opposed to having a game plan of A, B, and then C like I used to.

Unfortunately, I’m still not quite ready to make the jump from the safety of a biweekly paycheck to full-time freelance. It’s fucking scary, and I don’t even have many bills or any rent to worry about (yet; I really want to get an apartment with Mike by the fall).

I think what I really need right now is a vacation away from everything: away from all work (meaning BOTH jobs), away from home (though I love my family and friends and second family — what I call Mike’s family — I really need to just get away), and out of state. Basically, I need to go to Florida and lay in the sun by the pool all day, with no responsibilities or deadlines looming over my head.

I need to sit my ass down, do my taxes, and then take that return and GO. Then I’ll be able to do what needs to be done at both jobs for a little longer until I can support myself completely with my side business.

All figured out: taxes, wrap up urgent projects, plan vacation, receive refund, GO.

Thanks for listening. :)

Way beyond my reach

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I wish the holidays were over already. Aside from being super stressed out about projects for clients, and worrying like crazy about Popi, I’m now barely going to see Mike on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In years past, Toys R Us closed at like 6 on Christmas Eve and wasn’t open at all on Christmas Day. This year, they’re still closed on Christmas Day, but they’re open until 8 on Christmas Eve. Scratch that, as of today; Corporate sent an email at the last possible fucking minute and told everyone that they’d be open until 9.

What. The. Fuck.

Why does this matter?

Let me back up. Initially, Mike was scheduled until 8. He was trying to find someone to switch with so he could come over my house and have dinner with Noni, Popi, Biz Noni, Mom, Dad, Lauren, Aunt Wendy, Uncle Lonny, and I, but couldn’t, so he was going to see if he could just leave early because they will probably be dead. Now that they’re going to be open until 9, his boss asked him to stay until they close.

And he agreed.

Trust me when I say he already knows how pissed I am about this.

I understand why he’s doing it. Right now, he’s on great terms with his boss and the district manager, and he really wants to keep those relationships positive in case any higher positions open up. I get that. But still, I had a perfect picture of how Christmas would go, and now it’s just not going to be like that. I can’t help but be selfish and want to have things go my way. So much has not gone my way these last couple of years: my own health, my grandfather’s health, my living situation… I know I should just shut the fuck up and be grateful for what I’ve got. I know that. So many other people have it worse. It just feels like I’ve had a shitty line of luck lately and I guess I was depending on the holidays to be perfect so it could all be better.

To make things worse, I have a huge project deadline for the end of the month that can bleed into the first week of January because of some crazy server issues, but the deadline is making me nauseous because with all of the holiday shit going on, I have barely had time to work on it. Add a whole lot of lack of motivation, and I’m pretty fucked. Fuck you, depression. You’re such a greedy asshole.

So it’s no wonder that I’ve (sort of) picked up smoking again. I made sure not to buy myself a lighter tonight when I picked up a pack of Marlboro Lights. I’ve only had one so far. I don’t feel like I need one now, which is good, I guess. Right now, it’s either smoke or kill someone. Or run away to Florida.

It’s hard to get in the holiday spirit when so much shit is all fucked up. I miss being a little kid, and having only one worry this time of year: Santa not knowing that I really want a Gigapet, or whatever toy. (One year, I asked him every night before bed during this season to bring me a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. No lie. My love of Reeses started early.)

This year, Santa, all I want is to feel better. Actually, scratch that. I just want everything to go back to the way it was in mid November, when everything was better. When Daddy didn’t lash out every five seconds because he is hurting so badly inside. When I would go to the Barnes and Noble Cafe every afternoon to write with a Pumpkin Spice Latte at my side. When we looked forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas, not a care in the world. When I thought Popi might just have arthritis or a sciatic nerve problem, or something FIXABLE, dammit.

Right now, it feels like nothing in my life is fixable. I feel like I have no friends. I feel like I can’t rant too much to Mike because he is already stressed out enough and I know that by whining that he has to work late tomorrow night, I’m only making it worse. I feel like I have to walk on eggshells around my whole family, because I don’t want to say out loud that shit, I don’t believe in god so I have no fucking clue where my grandfather is going to go when he dies.

Fuck.

There it is, guys. There it fucking is.

Cracking

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Yesterday, I got no answers. Instead, I went for more blood work. Because apparently the hospital that my rheumatogolist’s office is connected to does blood work better than the place I normally use.

By the time I got home I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and starving. And I still had to go out to the pharmacy to buy my golden birth control.

Somewhere between the pharmacy and home, I got into a huge fight with someone because they lied to me. It wasn’t the first time, so I was livid. There’s nothing I hate more than a liar. By the time I got home from that, I was beyond Tired and all the way into I Packed My Bags and Went Crazy. Dad asked me something about work, and I lost it. I cried all over myself and my mom, and then cried some more.

Three weeks into not sleeping, working part-time, running a business, going to school full-time, and running a pen pal support group, and I lost it. I feel like a total failure.

I told Mom about how, at night, I literally wake up in the dead of night (four, five in the morning) with urgent tasks such as “Set up email on Google!” and “Check Spyware Doctor to see what it found while scanning!” Some days I wake up even before my alarm goes off. I toss and turn all night, my mind racing with everything I need to get done. Because it needs to get done, or the world is going to explode or implode or something like that.

I’m also up at night in pain a lot of the time, or toss and turn worrying about test results. So, no sleep + stress + multiple jobs = AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH! (Imagine here a little Lizzie Maguire stick figure running around, except she should look like me. If anyone wants to draw said Lizzie Maguire stick figure for me, go right ahead!)

Mom sat on the floor with me and gave me several relaxation techniques I can use at night to try to shut my mind the fuck up. One of them is repeating the same word (it should be a soothing word) over and over when I start to think of my To Do list. I did that last night, and it helped a little.

I have a lot I need to think about. Obviously, something has to go. I can’t do it all. If I could sleep better, I could probably handle it all better. So I’m going to work on that and see how it goes.