I'm so tired. It's the end of the week, my 4th week teaching here and I am exhausted. I was exhausted yesterday when I came home, even though I only taught for one period. I should have been wary of some sort of crash out coming... I've been weirdly awake while driving recently and I thought I was actually getting used to the trips out here. Nuh.
So what's on my mind??
- My first assignment for my Masters is due next week and I think I'm still feeling a bit burnt by my last miserable attempt at post-graduate study, especially since I thought I did ok... yet failed up the wazoo instead.
- I am perpetually terrified by my cavalier approach to driving. I know, as an intelligent human being, as I sit there in my car and try to rationalise closing my eyes, I know that it's wrong and it's dangerous and could end fatally. But the tiredness is so overwhelming. I was at the point where I was swerving off the road this morning.
- I'm not getting enough sleep. I'm just not. I need to average 9 - 10 hours a night. I reckon it's between 6 - 8, generally without a day nap. It's hurting me to stay awake - my brain hurts, and my eyes hurt from keeping them open.
- Even though I'd told my principal and head teacher about the narcolepsy, I don't know how to approach it again with them. Quite simply... my health needs are just not being met. I'm sitting here, crying from tiredness, and in an hour I have to go teach Year 8. Right now I am definitely not the best teacher I can be.
- Can I even keep this job?? Fuck I am so sick of thinking that. Every single job I've had for the past 3 years has had that cloud over it, of whether I can actually keep it up or not. Eventually, no. I can't.
- It frustrates me that basically my entire life is now my job. I'm fucking part time. I took a PART TIME job so that that wouldn't be the case. Instead, through the week I'm either not at home, or once I get home I'm asleep, or if I'm not asleep all I'm thinking about is how much I really want to sleep right now. It's hurting me, it's hurting my relationship and once I stop forcing myself to get the fuck up and do stuff, it'll start affecting my home environment. I can't prioritise anything else but work, and they keep demanding more of me - meetings, extra lessons, the stress of lesson observations. Saturday I spend in a daze, bewildered that I now have all this time to sleep, but thinking that what I really should be doing is washing and cleaning and going for a run and shopping and seeing people. By Sunday I start to wake up a little more, but then I have to prepare everything for the coming teaching week and try to go to bed as early as possible (never ends up being before 10) so I can get up at 5am to head to school for a before school rehearsal.