It is one of those days - the kind of which there have been very few in the last few months, the kind which you don't want many of - at all!
After giving serious thought to my condition, I realise that I am heading for a full blown burnout.
Thinking backwards to my last real break, I realise I haven't had one!
I got back to Brussels in June, before that I went to NZ to get married, before that I crossed continents, time zones and language barriers to move to Brussels, prior to that I was on a whirlwind shopping trip in India buying out stores and scoping alleys for one entire family's worth of wedding finery. This was after packing up four and a half years of PhD life in Canberra, vacating house and the like. Before this I was frantically trying to submit my thesis, dealing with a hostile work environment and a lack of support. Rewind four years and I moved to Australia from NZ a few months after finishing my degree, even before I graduated. Dial it back another four years and I was doing my undergraduate degree. And for ten years before that it was school just like the rest of the world. I will stop here and not retrace my steps to the womb.
So, penning this down, it hits me and hits me hard that I have not had a break. I did not take time off after school, after undergrad years, after PhD, nor did I do the mandatory honeymoon post marriage.
All these years I have been diving head-first into the next thing, sometimes taking with me energy and sanity and other times forgetting to bring them on board. Right now they are part of a distant past. Sleep is measured in fragments, the day is divided, leisure is stolen in between these, not always successfully.
So why am I blogging? Because I need to - I need this final shred of calm to touch base with the old me, to feel that the creative juices are flowing albeit slow and haltingly.
Now where is that Kit-kat?