Have you ever worked so hard that you skip meals, stop exercising and have trouble sleeping because work is constantly on your mind? Even so, the work never ends and you feel like even though you are already putting in an average of 12 hours a day, you are still forever trying to catch up. This is what I am going through right now, and it is not a pleasant experience.

To make matters worse, there is no acknowledgement for the efforts put in, as it is taken as a given. Mounting demands and pressures from various stakeholders makes it so hard to keep up with all the miscellaneous requests. Throw in a couple of staffing issues, and it makes for a pretty hellish start of the week.

Yesterday, as I left work around 8.45pm, I felt strangely numb yet tired mentally. When I took on this job, I didn’t expect it to be easy, but neither was I prepared for the chaos and lack of proper instructions and guidance on what is expected of me.

Gone is the resolution to hang in there for at least a year before moving on. What remains is just a dread at the start of another long work week and what unanticipated challenges might pop up to ruin the day.

This is not healthy but there is a part of me that hates to give up halfway. However, I suspect if I were to continue like this, something will break down, and it won’t be pretty. A physiotherapist I visited for my neck condition recently warned me that I am just running on adrenaline now, and when it ends, I will just collapse. That was a wakeup call, as I had never worked till the point of breakdown before and had no desire to ever get there.

I have also heard horror stories of colleagues having to work even while hospitalised. At this rate, I might end up with a similarly bad health crisis. Do I value my health and mental wellbeing, or does making a living matter more?

Sorry for writing such a depressing post, I debated a lot whether to publish it. This isn’t Zen-like at all, and it totally doesn’t jive with my intentions for writing this blog. Perhaps I should end on this Zen reminder to myself: Attachment is the source of suffering. I should re-evaluate my attachment to whatever keeps me in this job, to seek a way out of this unsustainable situation. At the end of the day, we all have a choice on how we want to live. Here’s hoping that this too, will pass someday.