The Statistics of Madness

Number of hours I spent at work over the last four days : 82

Number of Djarum which bit the dust over the last four days : 22

Number of hours sleep gotten over the last four days :6

Number of meals I'e missed : 5

Number of sunrises I've seen from my office: 3

Number of times I fell asleep while SMSing SheWhoRunsInStilettos to tell her how tired I was : 1 (I woke up to a blank screen and had to start all over again)

Number of times I nearly fell out my chair because I had lost all sense of psychomotor control : 5

Number of times I wondered if it was actually possible to die from lack of sleep : 16

Number of times I contemplated taking off my jeans because I was the only one in the office and there was no airconditioning and I was boiling in my dark denims and anyway I had cute knickers on: 1 (then I remembered the wall-to-wall windows and thought better of it, blinds or no blinds.)

Number of times I felt like stabbing my client with a stapler. Or stapling him to a chair and locking him in a room. A gajillion.

Number of documents which I looked at: 3,634, give or take a dozen

Something, eventually, has to give. It turned out to be my body, and even though I was supposed to get up at 7 a.m., after barely an hour's worth of sleep, I never heard the alarm clock, never heard whoever was trying to wake me up, until suddenly The Boss' voice was in my ear. I don't even remember the first part of the conversation, or how it happened to be that I was talking on the phone with him. I only remember the part where he asked me what time I had gone home and I told him "6 am" then he said "Oh God!" and then told me he was going to pass the phone to my colleague, Smokey. To The Boss' credit, he didn't flip even though today was D-Day and everything was supposed to have been done an hour ago.

Smokey later told me that he hadn't even recognized my voice on the phone, and it wasn't until I fuzzily asked him what time it was, and he'd said "9:50" and I screamed "OH, FUCK!" that was when he knew it was me for sure.

The Other Cat, The Boy, the p.w. and Miss J have during the course of the last few weeks told me that it's not worth it to keep brutalizing myself this way. No, it's not. But it's not the work that drives me, it's not the money. It's more complicated than that.

It's a lot of things. It's pride, to not just cruise through my last few months and doing things half-arsed. So I keep pushing and pushing and try to get it all done, and try to get it done right, even though there's no time, so that when I go, it is not with a whimper. I do it also because I owe The Boss more than just my job. I owe him in a way I doubt I can explain, and I hate disappointing him because it's like disappointing your father.

But mainly I do this because this is the price which I have to pay for my dream.
_______________________________

I'm not afraid of leaving this job (I look forward to it). I'm afraid of the new life that awaits for me because it takes me away from everything I know, and everything I love. Even if it is to do what I love, have loved for a long time.

Believe me, I'm jumping. (and may I add it's damned cheeky to quote my own words back at me)

But thank you anyway.