Back to Work
I think it’s fair to say I’ve been dreading returning to work – for the last two weeks I’ve been burying my head in the sand. After wading through the worst of the email mountain this morning, and getting my head down, I began to wonder if stress is sometimes a matter of perspective. Before returning I started playing over what might be waiting for me, but once in the thick of it, it’s just a question of working on one thing at a time – putting one foot in front of the other. Luckily it just so happens that I’m quite good at putting one foot in front of the other.
I ate lunch half an hour before lunchtime – which is a ridiculous thing to say, because surely the time you eat your lunch is “lunchtime”. Perhaps I should say “I ate much lunch half an hour before mid-day”. It’s now 3pm and I’m starving.
I’m forcing myself to take a break – writing this instead of submerging myself in source code. I didn’t stop at lunchtime, so have rationalised with myself that this is the right thing to do. The one good thing about stress is that it keeps you awake. I suppose coffee also keeps you awake, but after drinking two cups of instant coffee so far today, it’s making me feel sick. It’s going to take time to get used to the levels of coffee required to make it through the day again.
I can’t help feeling that if I didn’t care so much about what I do, or what people think of what I have done, I wouldn’t become so stressed. Of course if I didn’t care about such things, I would be no better than those that quietly infuriate me (this is where I open the brochure offering future careers painting suspension bridges, or cleaning windows).