On January 20 (last Thursday) I started a blog post about how much work I had, and how much of it was extremely time-sensitive, and how stressed I was feeling over said work. Then I didn’t have time to finish the post. Ah, irony.
Today (Tuesday 1/25) I got a migraine. I had one relatively recently – like, within the past couple months, whereas usually they’re maybe once every 1 to 1 1/2 years. This is the first time in a very long time that I’ve had 2 as close together as these ones. My migraines are pretty debilitating – they impair my vision, make light extremely painful, cause nausea and tend to last at least a full day. I’m fairly useless when I get one… really the best thing to do is go lie down in a dark room, and if possible sleep. (That’s what I did for this one – I went right home from work, got into bed and slept for about 1 1/2 hours, which did help somewhat.)
I’m sure that this migraine was at least in part caused by the sharp cold the Boston area has been experiencing – getting warm, drinking tea and having a hot shower all helped temporarily alleviate the pain. But I’m now 100% convinced that my migraines are primarily triggered by stress.
The amount of work I’ve had that needed to be completed over the past week has been absurd. And even before the migraine I had commented to Kay how unusually stressed I’ve been feeling, how overworked and how much I regret taking on so many things at once. It’s not that any one project sucks, or I don’t like it, but I simply have too much to deal with. The result of the overwork is more stress, and apparently, more migraines. Ironically, a migraine in response to overwork just sets me back further because I can’t work when I have one. (Not to mention that I lose time at the day job and have to use my already-scant PTO.)
Starting immediately, I’m going to be aggressively divesting myself of as many responsibilities as possible. It’s simply not worth it to stress myself out to this level. I still will be doing plenty – I have numerous things that I just have to do, most of which I really want to do, so I’ll still be busy. But more overwork of the kind I’ve had recently has to stop.
I’d also like it if maybe I could actually, you know… write again. That was a goal of mine recently, but it got shunted aside – again – because of other responsibilities. That will be the secondary goal of thinning my responsibilities.
So. I may be talking to some of you about things we do together, or things you’re not involved with but might want to be. Just FYI. I’ve said before that I wanted to lessen my workload. This time I think it’s actually necessary.
Post title from the film The Emperor’s New Groove