Okay, not at work today and should be. Calling in sick is my friend.

Should have seen this coming, really, what with my turning into My Lady of the Perpetual Burnout and complaining of tiredness 10,238,611 times a day every day for the last two weeks. I should have known there was no goddamn way I was actually going to make it through those last three hideous back-to-back shifts without suffering from some kind of fallout as a result. It just came a little sooner than I expected.

Something had to give and that something was my BRAIN.

I realized yesterday that I've been 'at work' in some way, shape or form since January 3. Sure, I've had periods of down time, but I haven't really had an actual holiday without college/revision/placements/the Terrible Secret of Space lurking alarmingly close to hand at the other end of it all and snarling at me. Even my Easter break wasn't much of a break, given that I spent the whole time worrying about the amount of revision I wasn't getting round to doing. Obvious consequence: I'm exhausted in just about every way a body can be exhausted.

Last night, after a shift which felt more like an endurance contest than a day working at a job I usually really enjoy, that exhaustion very dramatically got the better of me. Which is what I really should have seen coming. Long story short, I ended up calling in sick. I've decided that being so tired you can hardly think straight, let alone string a coherent sentence together, counts as 'sick' in my book. And I've been asleep pretty much since then (well, I took a bath first, but you know what I mean).

No wonder my mother always seemed so pissy and done in at the end of term. No wonder my dad kept hassling her to phone in sick and take a few days to recover.

(You know how when you're tired things you can normally ignore almost completely really get to you? Yesterday I got pissed off with the 'soothing' recorded voice in the lift, in fact I got so pissed I walked the last two floors so I wouldn't have to hear it any more.)

I've slept for hours and still feel drained and not terribly with-it, but at least my head has condescended to feel like my own again.

One day to go.

I mean it. I won't work Friday for anything, I've got no energy left.

I've come to the conclusion that there is no way on Earth I can play Little Mary Sunshine at work whilst feeling like Frankenstein's monster in unconvincing nurse drag (by that I mean weird, alienated and homicidal, to say nothing of ungainly and bizarre-looking).

Really, I'd probably have missed a shift anyway. Trying to work today feeling the way I did last night (as if I'd already done three shifts in a row, not just one day) would probably have seen me so exhausted come Thursday that I'd barely have been able to move. I still feel kind of airy-fairy and heavy-limbed, and am going to spend the rest of the day pottering about, not thinking too hard, and occasionally eating things with lots of carbohydrates and things in them for the sake of the energy boost.

I'm resigning myself to making up the one shift I'm going to be missing (I cannot see myself working Friday, not when I have to be in a fit state to travel Saturday - which is hellishly tiring in and of itself - and am going to spend the day intermittently lugging round the 10,000 ton weight commonly known as 'my suitcase' round with me) in the rest of the 'Hooray I Am Making Up Placement Time' time I am doing at the end of August. I just can't do it right now. Too goddamn tired. One more shift I can handle. Two I can't.

ONE DAY TO GO, God dammit.

I'm going to go eat something with energy in it. And then probably fall asleep again. Hey, I never claimed to be a hard woman to satisfy.