Monday, July 16, 2007

Health, Work & Hell


I am sitting here at my computer typing away on a mother-hugging press release for one of my clients...I wasn't able to get to it today, and like a jackass, I brought it home with hopes to do it tonight. When I get home, I don't want to write a damned release. I want to hang out with my family. I find myself asking the question, "What the Hell am I doing?" 2007 has got to be the absolute shittiest work year of my life. From 1/3/07 until now, my work life has been absolutely non-stop. I am so damn tired and burned out. I just got back from a vacation in Hawaii, and it didn't help calm me down at all. Once I got back in the office, all I has was more work to do and it was piling up everyday.


I still have this damn cough that I cannot get rid of...it is the same cough that I got back in January...after a million different drugs, I still can't shake it. It has absolutely crippled me...literally. I coughed so hard, I blew my stomach open and had to in for surgery to have it taken care of. The thing that pisses me off the most is that I couldn't take any time off to rest and recover from my battle with Bronchitis, flew and Laryngitis. I just fought through it, and it landing me in the O.R. Thats just f'ing great!! The cough is starting to hurt my side, and I am worried that I am going to give myself another hernia. My teenage insomnia has returned, so I am getting roughly 3 hours of sleep a night, and it is killing me. All I do is worry now about work and whether I can keep doing it at the pace I'm going. I have been busting my ass for 7 months now, and I'm tired. I'm so burned out and I feel like what has made me successful in the past is no longer a part of me. I am just a shadow of what I used to be. I'm not fun, happy...myself anymore. I am just a shell of the old me. Work has just annialated me and my spirit. Every morning, I wake up and dread the day...I just want to sleep and get better. I never have understood the power that stress and no sleep can have over a person. I feel like I am in a deathgrip, with the life slowly being squeezed from me.


It is the depressing time like this that make me so mad and go back to the dark times. Dark thoughts fill my mind, and I hate everything around me. Don't worry, I'm not running for the razorblades, but the world just seems to be closing around me, and I can't breath. Everyday, I fight back the tears and bile that rises in my stomach. Is this what an ulcer feels like? Is this what a heart attack feels like? With every passing second, I feel like I am on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. Sometimes I can feel my heartbeat inside my head, and I think I am going to pop. Anxiety attacks are common-place now, and I think everyone is out to ensue I fail at everything I do. Time is my enemy in that there just isn't enough of the damn thing in the day to get everything accomplished. This isn't a call for help, just a blank page for me to rant and gnash my teeth.


This is what Hell must be...sitting here in front of my computer at 1:00 am, literally dying inside while my wife and son sleep. I will wake up in a few hours and go into work with a feeling of impending doom surrounding me all day long. My eyes are heavy, and all I want to do is sleep...I could sleep for a week straight...if I had the time. One day soon, I think I am going to have a nervous breakdown, and lose myself. Work has changed me...it has scarred me...ruined me mentally and physically. At times when I finish a project, I should be happy and excited to move on to the next project...but I can'tfeel that satisfaction anymore.


As I sat in my rental car in Madison, Wisconsin last month at the culmination of the biggest PR campaign I have ever done, and one of the biggest stressors ever in my life, what should have been a time to kick it and celebrate that the beast was dead, I sat all alone at an intersection with storm clouds brewing around me...crying...sobbing really that my life was in the state that I was in...not Wisconsin...but a state of complete sorrow, sadness and solitude.
Now here I am putting off work so I could post a quick entry on my killer blog.

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