World mental health day was yesterday apparently. I missed it because I worked all freaking day while sick and tired. I had a lovely 4.5 hours of sleep because of congestion and probably anxiety about two Work calls I have today and maybe the caffeine I took at 6pm to make it through the evening. I dunno. I could lament more about how crappy my week has been so far but would that do any good? Actually it might.

I realized yesterday that one thing that happens when you work from home is working while being sick. I couldn’t take a sick day and almost nobody I had interactions with knew I wasn’t feeling well. My boss (one of my bosses) called at 8AM and at the top of the conversation he asked how I was. I told him I was feeling I’ll. I received a quick “awww man, that sucks” and that was that. I still worked like a 10 hour day because the clock on the release of the next version of software doesn’t stop for the low man on the totem pole even though I’m the only QA person right now. I did my due diligence all day long on that and ran point on like 4 other projects. I checked all the boxes an powered through.

I didn’t get any sympathy from my teenagers either. It’s not their strong suit. I had a nice conversation with Jim but it wasn’t the same thing as being in person. When you have a person, a partner, you just want to be with that person. Instead we talked while I walked on the treadmill – yeah, trying to walk myself into feeling better (apparently it didn’t work).

Last night I lay in my bed for 2 hours not able to fall asleep and that just doesn’t happen. I’m usually so exhausted by 10 pm I can hardly stay awake. I tried to read but could not focus. I tried to sleep but tossed and tossed. I wrote a little, but that was mostly nonsense. I woke up this AM exhausted as hell. I’ve got no choice but to do it all over again.

I get the kids up, breakfast, fight about being behind schedule, and eventually get them to school. I’ve got another full set of work to do despite how I’m feeling. I’ve got one call that’s supposed to be a training session and I’ve been given very little direction on. I’d be better with that if I was a SME but I’m just a freaking newbie. That’s weighing on me. I’ve got another project call to facilitate today. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel prepared for those sorts of things.

I feel like I just need a sick day. Call it a true sick day or a mental health day or whatever. If the world has a day dedicated to mental health, I think I’d like to have one too. I know all the responsibility will still be there tomorrow… school, work, kids, but I’d like to just ignore it all for a day (or maybe two). Maybe if I get through enough today then tomorrow it would be possible.

Guess this post was a test to see if complaining would make me feel better, and it really didn’t. Oh well, oh well.

Winning Some and Losing Some,
~Miss SugarCookie