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  I am burnt out. Hardly the most shocking declaration given I have been saying it out loud for a while now but here we are. This isn't my first run in with burn out nor will it likely be my last. Not only am I working in a stressful job, a social care worker in residential care, which is no stranger to burn out but also I am autistic so its like I know a secret short cut to getting there. I think as bragging goes this is up there with declaring how many times I have managed to catch covid. Which is 4 at my current count and they say there are no benefits to working in Health care. If you are lucky enough to not have experienced burnout then I can tell you its not an experience I would recommend to a friend. If you have friends working in social care then you probably wont need to.  Some of the things I have been experiencing are random bouts of crying. Given high sensitivity is part of my autism profile, I am no stranger to crying and the first time I experienced burnout it t...

 This is my first post in over a year. I think I had actually forgotten I even had a blog. At some point I felt I had covered all the good topics and with nothing new to offer then what is there to write about.  However in exactly thirty days I will be leaving my thirties forever, I am pretty sure that's how growing older works for everyone but still. I am still grasping with the fact that I am about to be forty. I mean I am told I don't look my age and I mostly definitely don't feel it and yet despite all this I find myself hurtling into a new decade. I am not entirely sure this is where I pictured my life at almost forty. Not that I ever spent that much time projecting myself that far ahead but I think on some level I thought I would have it figured out. I don't, not at all. I feel as though I am a much younger person impersonating a fully grown adult and some point someone in my life will have their aha moment and out me as an imposter.  I mean adulting is not always...

After surviving my very first proper hike and getting so excited I accidentally bought a pair of hiking boots, I decided it was about time I went on another hike. The crowd I had hiked with last time were doing a pretty tough hike on a Sunday and I was working for it but much to my good fortune a colleague had sent me on a link to a walk happening today that she thought might be my thing. So the previous hike I had been on was with a group of amateur hikers and it was great in a very tough sort of way but this walk was being led by a qualified hill walking guide which meant there was a €20 fee but a much lower chance of falling off a rocky bit of mountain. That's always a plus. I didn't mind paying because I really wanted another hike and sure there's worse things I could be spending a bit of money on. So the morning got off to a bit of a rocky start. I left home in what I thought was plenty of time and put the destination into my maps and off I went. Except for ...

I know my last post was night duty related but seeing as I will be on night duty until Monday morning (when my last shift for the time being finishes) this is my life right now. I will say having done nights I can fully understand why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. I have done 5 nights so far (four more to go) but it feels like a lot more and it is fair to say that nights have kind of taken over my life (for now). The thing about nights is that while the whole staying awake at night part is tough. Especially when you have all the physical work done, everyone is asleep and I am too brain dead to do any paperwork in a coherent fashion. That's the bit where you feel as though you might actually die from tiredness and then surprise yourself time and time again by surviving. Then the morning gets going and the busyness keeps you awake until hometime. So you drive home and fall into bed only to find your mind buzzing and you wait for sleep to come. I once tried a tri...

The other day I was looking in the mirror scrutinising my face in a critical fashion and thinking how badly overdue a hair cut I am and I realised, much to my horror, that my face is after becoming terribly round. This should not be a shock. I had become very neglectful in terms of gym attendance and between the demise of my relationship and the aftermath I had been eating sugar as though my life depended on it. I had also been eating a ridiculous amount of bread which does as much for my digestive system as it does for my waistline. I am not one of those magical women who can eat whatever I want without consequence. I seem to wear the consequences primarily on my face and muffin top before it spreads to other areas. This is not an acceptable state of affairs. My hair has become very shaggy and its not a good look but before I deal with my disastrous hair, I must first tackle my moonface. If I know anything about the bob hairstyle, and I should know plenty as I have had ...

It's hard sometimes to be an introvert in this very extroverted world. People expect something more than introversion in social settings and it takes its tole. When I am getting ready for a night out I need a few hours to build myself up. Some quiet time at home or else the whole idea becomes a bit overwhelming. I am aware I am not the only one who feels this way but sometimes I can't help feeling we introverts are in the minority. I sometimes find depending on how my few days in work have gone that I might be totally unable to do anything vaguely sociable on at least one of my days off. This magnified by my propensity to take on the emotional baggage of those around me like some kind of pointless sponge and it leaves me carrying the stress and anxieties of those I have been in contact with long after I go home. As if that wasn't enough to drain me then couple with my stress eating sugar binge of late that never seems to end even though it often feels like I am o...

Today I had one of those days where I was on the move all day and I have the step count to prove it. I was actually buzzing around work so much looking for the next thing to do that it was actually suggested to me more than once that I take a break ( my allocated break that is) but I didn't want to or wasn't able to because there was a buzzing in my head that told me my anxiety is alive and kicking and in some strange way I felt that maybe if I didn't stop I could outrun this vicious swirl of thoughts. Obviously at some point I have to stop because I am not the energizer bunny and long as my work day might be, it does have an allocated end. This just leaves me and my worries, some rational, some not to dance the rest of the night away. I find myself home alone as I rush home desperate to have to some time in, my other half works from here and can never seem to wait to get out and see people. This leaves me with silence and subtle distractions but my thoughts are loude...

I wish I could sleep for days, at this stage I feel like that's what it would take to get me back on track. I've read that in sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture and I can understand why, did you ever see how harassed someone looks when they haven't gotten enough sleep, well then its easy to imagine what no sleep could do. I used to maintain that the worst part of drinking is the hangover and I'm not going to back track and say I don't mind being hungover because now feels like a bad time to be telling dirty lies when my hangover is such a nasty beast that usually leaves me limping around woefully for at least a day after I've been drinking. What I am saying however is the Nausea/ headachey side of has now been usurped by sleep deprivation. Yes sleep deprivation might just be my true nemesis and If I don't escape it's clutches soon I'm at real risk of going a little mad ( okay well a bit more mad than I am already). So to recap you ...