have more energy

..and despite the snotfest and thudding head I was sprightly, cheery, relaxed and relatively full of beans.

One and a half days back at work so far and already my back is crunching with tension, my eyes are burning with tiredness and I am panicking about where I’ll find the brain/body energy to do this week’s homework, go on Saturday’s course and keep myself and my surroundings relatively fed and clean. Last night I was so tired I nearly cried when I couldn’t find a worksheet I’d been given at college the night before. Totally irrational.

So I think maybe I’ve worked out what’s draining my energy, then. Huh.

Since I got my car, I can get up approximately 20 minutes later and still have loads and loads of time to get ready at a far more leisurely pace than I used to when I got public transport. A couple of times I’ve even had time for a quick cooked breakfast, like a boiled egg with soldiers, instead of throwing cereal down my neck and top then running for the bus. I don’t know whether it’s that extra 20-minute doze, or the reduced stress of a journey that takes 20 pleasant minutes rather than 50 anxious ones (which were divided thus: walk, wait for bus, get bus, walk, wait for train, get train, walk, wait for bus, get bus, walk), but I feel so much more energetic at the moment. Even the fact that it takes just as long to get home as it used to doesn’t bother me – going home is a treat not a trauma. I feel so much better than I may even start getting up early again to run, although I still have an iffy ankle and dodgy knees.

On top of that, I’ve taken up water drinking on a massive scale again – at least 1.5l a day at work, plus non-caffeinated drinks. It takes a little discipline not to throw down the placebo decaf coffee, but it seems to be keeping my brain hydrated and functioning better.

As for repressed emotions, hm, I am more and more convinced that they are related. But I have a fab new tool to deal with those. Squeee! It’s ace. All will become clear. Since I was recently diagnosed with a depressive relapse (whoo yay!) I’ve decided to take a couple of months off coaching pretty soon and concentrate on personal development, with my attitudes towards various issues, relaxation, stress and self-care/esteem amongst others, taking centre stage. I suspect that the weight issue will at least partially resolve itself as I start dealing with these.

For about 18 months now I have felt shattered almost all the time, mentally and physically. Sometimes I’m so tired I can’t even put my words in the right order. It’s affecting a lot of areas of my life, in particular my coaching, because my concentration is shot to pieces – it’s hard to coach effectively. And I’m neglecting the other work I need to do to build my business, because while I try and try each night to get my head into enough order to do something constructive, I just wind up reading my 43T subs and Google Reader, too fucked in the brain to do any decent work. I mean, seriously. I’m too shagged even to write any decent posts on here.

Why is this? The job I’m doing these days is a lot more mentally demanding and draining (ironically, considering the low status it has), and is definitely taking it out of me. Affecting me too are the earlier mornings that this job demands, because I’ve always found, contrary to science’s dogma, that if I go to bed late and get up later, I feel better than if I’d gone to bed early and get up early. Yes, I’m a medical freak. At least the insomnia which dogged me for years is pretty much a thing of the past.

I’ve actually taken so many steps to improve my health in the past two years that it’s surprising that this is a problem. Oddly, it seems that since quitting cigarettes, weed, caffeine and wild school-night drinking sprees, and taking up organic vegetables and exercise, my body has rebelled by becoming fatter, spottier, and exhausted.

Frankly, I’m stumped. My boss’s wife, who has ME, even suggested that I too might be suffering from low-level ME, and urged me to be careful. I don’t think it is, but you never know. A thyroid test I took a year or so ago showed up nothing, though I suppose I could repeat it.

What else could it be? Some possibilities:

• Stress – there’s no denying that I am stressed to the hilt. Since I stopped the doing of nothing being the main focus of my life, and started making efforts to move forwards, the idea of actively relaxing is somehow repugnant to me. Even last week when I was ill on Sunday, I used that time to read self-development books and watch The Secret. My brain doesn’t really get time off.
• Repressed emotions – I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days since coming across the theory that I may be self-sabotaging my own success, which I perhaps (at the moment) don’t really believe I can have or deserve, by being too knackered to do anything to get it. How can anyone success when they’re this exhausted? Look how rubbish you are. It’s a bit of a crazy idea, but I hold with many crazy ideas, so I’m not discounting it.
• Food intolerances – I took a test a month or so ago to see if I have any and apparently I do, but I need to get another, more expensive test to find out what they are. I am putting this off mainly because a) it’s spendy and b) I don’t want to be told that I am allergic to my darlings cheese and wheat. Oh noes! What would I eat?!
• My weight – I don’t know about this one. I mean, I’m bigger than I was, but I don’t think I’m big enough to make it this much more tiring to lug myself around. And it wouldn’t really account for the mental fuckedness.
• Sleep deprivation – well, yeah. I probably get around six and a half to seven hours a night, and none of it before midnight. This isn’t enough according to Science with a capital S, but it’s always been enough for me. In the olden days, by which I mean up until two years ago when I restarted on my new career path(s), I would regularly go to sleep at 2am and get up at 8.30am, work a full day, go out drinking and socialising, and feel full of energy and vim all that day and the next. Can a couple of years extra in age and a difference in lifestyle really make that much difference to my sleep needs? I would really resent having to go to bed at 10pm each night in order to feel awake enough to do a job I don’t actually enjoy or want to do, and I would really resent losing the few hours of time I do get each day to do the things I want to and need to do in order to keep my coaching career, my health, and my surroundings in order and moving forwards.

I’m going to stop writing now because this post is getting really long (and I’m knackered, ha ha). I’ll have a think about some more possible causes and, or course, what on earth I’m going to do about this, and post in a later entry. Any suggestions gratefully received.