Messed up, that is. Why is it that after you’ve been overworking your idiot self for way, way too many weeks on end, when you finally get a few days of peace and quiet, you feel nervous, edgy, and…well, stressed?
Last week I arrived at a point where at last, for the first time in longer than I can remember, nothing remained that had to be done right now, if not sooner. Yes, there are a few things I should’ve done before this. I’m getting to them one at a time, slowly. But for a change, there’s no hurry and nothing that’s going to make us or break us hangs on any of these few bits and pieces of ditz.
You’d think this would lead one to unwind and unlax, right?
Well, no.
For the past few days I’ve been having heart palpitations (no joke! sounds just like a neurotic old lady, doesn’t it?), headaches, and even migraine auras. Damn! Dragged in to see Young Dr. Kildare this morning, because the nonstop pitter-pat of my little heart won’t quit.
He thinks it’s Return of the Anxiety Attack, but that theory notwithstanding, he’s sending me to a cardiologist to be jumped through all sorts of hoops, and he wants to test for kidney and liver issues.
I don’t know: as a practical matter, this doesn’t feel like the anxiety attack that sent me to the Mayo’s ER thinking I was having a heart attack. It doesn’t make me feel like I’m going to faint or cause such extreme lightheadedness that I can’t drive. And it doesn’t come and go. The monster anxiety attacks came and went suddenly. This doesn’t stop, or at least not for any length of time. Yesterday I woke up with it and went to bed with it. This morning I felt OK till I had to leave for class (hmmm…). It’s after four and the sense that my heart is beating too fast that started around 6:45 a.m. continues unabated.
Oh well. It hasn’t kilt me yet. Maybe it won’t. Or, with any luck at all, maybe it will. 😉
So…what could be making me feel soooooo stressed that it’s giving me phantom cardiac symptoms?
High on the list of possibilities: Extremely drawn-out short-timer’s syndrome. I told my honored chair that I wished to quit teaching composition what…two, three weeks ago? Sometime in the foggy past. Another eight weeks remain in the semester. It feels like forfuckinEVER to me.
Probably, too, dwelling on the ludicrousness of one’s job and how much one hates it is not good for one’s mental health. Possibly I should try not to think about the joys of teaching.
I must say, though, that I’ve managed to extract some pretty good blog posts from it. 😀 Matter of fact, I’m thinking I’ll make an e-book of Adjunctorium’s count-down to freedom. Try to peddle it through that guy who has the big Spreadsheet in the Sky documenting exactly how scandalously adjunct faculty are paid and treated.
Next on the neurosis list: money. The usual. Money.
I do not know why the prospect of starving to death under the Seventh Avenue overpass freaks me out. But it does.
As a practical matter, just this month I’ve billed enough to cover the first quarter of The Copyeditor’s Desk’s contribution to my 2013 upkeep. And as a practical matter, even if CEDesk earns not. one. more. penny this year and next, it has enough in its bank account to support me for a year.
If in fact the business continues at this rate (maybe it’s this quiet spell that makes me nervous?), one month can pay for a quarter’s drawdown and the other two will pay for overhead. But as yet another practical matter, the quarterly budget includes a monthly set-aside for major expenses like computer and printer hardware; pay for subcontractors comes out of the earnings they bring in…and the rest of it is small change.
I don’t know why it’s nervous-making…it just is.
Well. Possibly it’s that there’s no other source of income, absent the hated teaching job, that credibly can keep the wolf from the door.
What else?
I hurt. I’m tired of being sick. Very tired of being sick.
The other day I realized I’ve been sick nonstop for a full year. It started last fall when I took that accursed double-whammy flu shot, which brought on the respiratory infection that led to the horrible bronchitis, which the pulmonologist treated with antibiotics and Prednisone, which led to the bellyache that lasted for months on end, and then I did the job on my back and leg tendons, which led to the sciatica and the plantar fasciitis, neither of which will go away, which led to my drinking two bourbons and waters as I have been writing this, which has not stopped the busy heartbeat but which most certainly has made it a great deal more tolerable.
And so…being duly cocktailed up, to throw a steak on the grill…
Any chance you’re hyperthyroid?
YDK is checking for that, too.
There is a wonderful side effect to being hyperthyroid, you lose weight. It happened to me. 🙂
You are transitioning from a paycheck (albeit one you consider shitty) to a fully self employed person…OF COURSE YOU ARE STRESSED!
Yeah, that certainly could be part of it.
Unless we have another economic crash, though, I feel pretty certain that the self-employment project is going to fly. Money indeed does happen. And even if it doesn’t, if the only income I had was Social Security, the max I’d have to pull down from retirement savings would be 4.8%. Not good, but my guy thinks I could go as high as 6% without harming principal significantly.
Well…when I once worked a call center job (GACK!), most people there were sick. They suffered anxiety, depression, heart palpitations, you name it. Someone was getting carted out on a stretcher EVERY WEEK. That was one of many signs for me that I was in the wrong job, LOL!
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if a chunk of this clears up after you get out of this semester. Toxic environments poison us.
Another chunk of what you feel is also probably the nontraditional paycheck syndrome, which I suffer from as well. For example, I took a look at my income for the rest of this school year, and though it’s coming in through multiple, sometimes very weird channels — holy crap, I think I’m on track! But I still have anxiety about the NEXT year and the year after that, and what if I get a big tax surprise, and …and…and…what if…you get my point.
Yes…I worry very much about my son. “Claims adjuster” is just another term for “worker in an insurance company’s call center.” It’s a horrible, hideously stressful job. I wish to God he could find the nerve to quit, borrow a shitload of money, and go back to school in some trade where he’d be likely to find less miserable work. However…the way things are, graduate degrees no longer seem to open many doors. One might do better to go back to a community college and get an AA in some trade.
As for the likes of us: it’s Bag Lady Syndrome redux. No doubt of it.
What brand of bourbon?
Maker’s Mark. Available in lifetime supplies at my favorite purveyor of wholesale-quantity goods…
There’s a reason why we pray for our daily bread, not next week’s, not next month’s. God knows we’re not built for long-term planning, despite our proud claims otherwise. If getting our ducks in a row actually was a real possibility, we’d pray for more and better ducks, not grace.
Once again, I invite you for a stay with us – we were given the LARGEST bottle of Maker’s Mark that will take us a lifetime to finish so you needn’t stop at Costco for any refills … 😉
I would most certainly tag anxiety/stress for a fair amount of your symptoms. They sound rather familiar to me – I definitely have had chest pains, tightness, breathing trouble, increased heart rate for no other apparent reason, etc.
And constantly being sick/not being able to get better? Also so very likely to be related.
Honestly, I think the sooner you can get out of the high-stress stuff, and the worrying about the money when you do have viable strategies to make decent income, the better your poor ticker will feel.
Just wanted you to know that I enjoy your writing and appreciate that you share yourself to me and other readers. I don’t feel quite so alone. — I agree with the others that I expect you will feel better when you give up the job that you hate.