Tag Archives: Sleep

Obsession & Burnout-2

Obsession & Burnout are back to haunt me. I have blogged about it before, but this time, things are a bit worse.

So, the background is, that after months of doing very light-level work, I have been handed a challenging project. Not an impossible project, not an easy one, moderately challenging. Others would be excited for this opportunity (actually were). However, I have already started obsessing about it all the time. My free time everyday, weekends and sleep time has been taken over by obsessively thinking about this project.

Some of this thinking is productive; that is I do accomplish some positive outcome, but most of it is irrational fear. Haven’t slept much last few nights.

I believe the reasons for this are

  1. Lack of useful distractions away from work because of the lockdown (more apparent during the weekend). Examples of this includes going out to spend time with family, friends & family friends. I have not much to look forward to, all week.
  2. Lack of physical boundaries between work and leisure. Earlier, work happened in the office (mostly) and leisure happened elsewhere. Now there’s only one place for both (home), so it has become difficult to switch off from work mode when the day or week is over.
  3. My usual hang ups about obsession, that were always a part of me.
  4. Uncertainty about future events, some of which are beyond my control.
  5. Fear of failure, which is more or less irrational.
  6. Hectic schedule with both parents working and trying to handle a kid.
  7. Guilt of not spending enough time with family, forcing that to happen and being absent emotionally even then and not doing work either.
  8. Thinking about all the above amplifies the condition.

I plan to follow the steps below to deal with this situation

  1. Practice mindfulness everyday, and make it a part of daily life and log mood daily.
  2. Use organisation hacks like making lists for everything, tracking all To Dos etc.
  3. Writing down things that cross my mind at the end of the work day and when not working and can be done later.
  4. Establish chronological boundaries when it comes to work.
  5. Establish physical boundaries within the house when it comes to work (This might prove a bit difficult)
  6. Finding an engaging hobby (TV generally doesn’t help) to take my mind off such thoughts during leisure time.
  7. Wait for this to blow over, as such phases don’t last more than a few weeks.

For now, I just want one night of good sleep, to recharge my health and sanity, for which I will use a friend’s help.

Holi log

Thursday, 08 March
14:30: Buy copious amounts of Bhang
14:45: Consume copious amounts of Bhang
15:30: Start feeling sleepy
15:30 – 19:30): Resist sleep
19:31: Consume copious amounts of KFC and a virgin Mojito
20:00: Start losing short term memory. Everything is in episodes
20:15 onwards:
Start feeling giddy and start losing sense of Balance. House feels dark and depressing, even though there are many lights on. Unable to control my smile. Feel hungry again. It feels like there are ice cubes in my stomach. I must have something to eat and then go to sleep. I just had a phone conversation but cannot remember with whom. The computer monitor seems a long way away from me; a few hundred metres at least. But how am I then typing on it?
20:21: Filled my bag of Sun-dried tomatoes with Olive Oil
20:40: Am having sad thoughts. Maybe some ancient bad dreams. Of a place that is remote, full of water. Maybe rain water and a sharp metallic smell. Start listening to “Shine on you crazy diamond” to lighten the mood. The opening notes seem to be going on for quite some time. A long time. Stuck maybe?
20:45: Sudden craving to watch Michael Palin’s New Europe; although I cannot find the DVD.
20:47: Have that school-time Sunday evening depression; even though I am not in school and its not SUnday evening
21:31: Had a lot of dinner. Maybe worth 2 people. Kept having sad thoughts. Wondering of some time when I sat in front of TV all night long till it was morning.
21:34 Some hallucinations
21:40: Started watching Michael Palin’s new Europe. Stopped watching in 10 minutes and deleted
21:52: Started listening to Shine on you Crazy Diamond again. Music seems oddly low on Tempo.
22:01: Go to sleep
Friday, 09 March
12:00 Noon: Woke up after being asleep for 14 hours
Overall, this was nothing compared to this

Sleep!!

I feel sleepy.. That would have been a good thing if it was 3’O Clock at night which is the time I generally want to sleep but I can’t. At that time even if I am dead tired, I lay turning on the bed able to doze off only after an hour or so. It’s here in office that sleep beckons to me the most and it’s so tempting that I just want to go grab a bean bag, find a quiet corner and doze off… Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

Let me sleep you bastards!!

This is to all the bastards who don’t let me sleep. They make it seem like they have been deliberately planted there to prevent me from having a good sleep It’s not that you do it sometimes.. Everyday you come along an interfere with my sleep. I am talking about you guys :-

  1. The Garbage Man:-You come along every morning at 8. I wake up at 9 so this is the time when I am trying to have the last hour of peaceful sleep. But it seems you have some problem with that. It’s not that you scream or shout or anything. You simply push your metal cart along on the road, banging it on the side with a heavy iron pipe. The sound it makes is simply terrible. Believe me. It’s like you are pounding my brain with the rod. Your speed of pushing the cart is so slow, it takes you atleast half an hour from the point the noise started hitting my ears to the time you are totally out of earshot. Apparently, your ears have already been damaged by your own noise because you cannot hear me hurling abuses at you from the window. Also the bulb(which doesn’t work anyways) that hit you on the side of the face last week was from me. Apparently, you thought someone had thrown garbage for you as you put it in your cart and trudged along without any expression on your face. Dude, If I ever see you or your cart in daylight, I am gonna do some serious damage.
  2. The Popcorn Man:-You make your rounds at around 5.15 in the evening. I am at college all day and have to go to gym at 5.30 so I generally try to get 20 minutes of sleep before that. But NO!! You are even more irritating than the garbage man as your Pan that you bang is made of some metal which reverbrates the sound. Even after you have stopped banging the pan, it reverbrates for atleast 5 seconds. Just like a freaking Bell.
  3. The Bastard with the Santro:-You come home every night at around 3 at night from who knows where. You must be whoring or pimping around as your wife is never with you. You have got this Santro that you have fitted with those gadgets which produce terrible shrieking sounds when you put your car in reverse. Again, this is another of those noises which just seem to pound your brain. You TRY parking your car every night by putting it in reverse. The shrieking sound startles me suddenly waking me up. I try sleeping when it stops but AGAIN you put your car in reverse and hence the noise. You have to put your car in reverse atleast 5 times before you can get it into your gate. Either your driving skills suck bad or you are hopelessly drunk. No wonder your gate is scrapped all around and so is your car. By the time you’re done, I am trying to get back to sleep with a terrible headache. You didn’t have to beat the local puncture-repair guy up. He didn’t deliberately puncture all your tyres, I did.
  4. The Hell-Hound:-You are a pure coward. You seem to be a mix-breed of a Hyena and a Mongrel. You are the Santro guy’s pet. You bark all night long at every passerby or animal. Strangely, I have never seen you bark at anyone when the gate’s open. That time, you are mostly cowering behind the Santro. Anyways, what you did last night was pure shit. You killed the Polio-ridden pomerian of next door and dragged him all over the neighbourhood. Dude, that dog was 1/4th your size. Still, you seem to take over half an hour to do it. For half an hour, I was covering my ears with my pillow as you barked at him and mangled him while the poor bastard was yelping for his life. On top of that, you chose the area in front of my house to do it. In the morning as I woke up and went out to buy my biscuits and milk, I saw that you had dragged the poor mutt to your front gate to display it like a trophy. I am waiting for you tonight with my air-gun you bastard. One shot in each of your eyes should do the trick.
  5. The Luna guy:-Well, you don’t choose a particular time to jar my brain but still, mostly you do it early morning at around 5. You live behind my house. You start up your 30cc moped and rev it’s engine as you would do with a sports bike. You find it necessary to warm up the engine for a full 5 minutes at full rpm before you race away to wherever you go. Furthermore, you don’t do it while your moped is on it’s rubber wheels but when it’s on it’s stand. The whole house of mine seems to vibrate with your moped. Don’t be surprised if you find your moped broken to pieces someday.

Given the chance, I would like to take the oppurtunity to beat each of them into a pulp but I am too lazy to wake up and catch you at the act. But hell-hound, you are dead tonight..