Update: Work, Work, and More Work

In my last blog post, I wrote about how I suddenly came into three jobs within the span of a couple weeks and how I expected them to affect me. It’s been two weeks since then and I’ve decided to write an update, as I’ve begun to grow accustomed to working and the jobs have proved to have a large effect on my life. In hindsight, I can’t think of a much worse time to have started working. I’ve had to add 25-30 hours of work to my already busy schedule just as teachers started piling on assignment after assignment because the end of the semester is marching closer. Once I get through the next couple of weeks and begin the second semester I should be a lot better off because the workload will be lighter and I will have found a better way to manage my schedule, but the remaining two weeks before finals are incredibly daunting to me.

When my working hours are added to the fact that I live in Danville and it takes an hour or two (depending on mode of transportation) to get to/from Champaign, I have very little time for sleep, friends/family, me time, schoolwork, etc. The sudden lack of time has already taken a toll on me. I’ve been turning in so much mediocre (and even just plain bad) work and I hate letting subpar work represent me as a student, but I simply haven’t had time to work on schoolwork to the extent that I’d like. For example, the other day I actually forgot that an essay was due and showed up to class without even an outline. I then had to write this entire paper on a night when I didn’t get home until 11:30pm. I ended up only getting three hours of sleep and my sleep deprivation skyrocketed. My fatigue then led to my schoolwork suffering more, which led to more stress and less sleep, and the cycle began.

It’s been really interesting to see how my work affects me mentally. As someone with depression and anxiety who needs a lot of time for myself to maintain a stable mental state, you’d figure that spending so much of my time working or at school would have taken a huge toll on me mentally. And when my busyness is paired with sleep deprivation, my mental state does plummet. But otherwise I’ve honestly been so busy that I simply haven’t had any time to feel much of anything at all. Which is awful because I love how I thrive on emotions. Still, it’s been a really nice break from the negative emotions that I’m so used to, and I just hope that it can last me through the end of the semester.

However while this adjustment has sucked so far, I think I’m over the worst of it. I’m a lot more caught up in my classes than I was even just a week ago. I’ve been getting about twice as much sleep over the past few days and today and yesterday I ended up having hours on end with nothing to do but catch up on time for myself. The adjustment was incredibly difficult for two or three weeks, but I’m certain that the hardest adjustment period is over and now I’m ready to face the rest of the school year head-on (and so ready for the paychecks to start rolling in).