Mental health day

Tuesday, 8th of November 2022

This article was first posted by me HERE.

Holidays are great. We get to take a break from daily routine and get to experience something different. Whatever it might be.

I rarely go for organised holidays. Salsa trips are probably the most organised short breaks I take. Otherwise I just get in a car, book a ferry and drive 1000 miles to Poland. Sometimes I take a plane too, but taking my car has this advantage that my long journey is pretty much paid for by all the savings I make on servicing my car abroad and the other things I buy at heavily reduced price while there.

The only downside is going back home after spending an amazing time with my family. This time I broke the trip into a few parts. Although I was sad leaving my parents behind on Thursday night, I had next stop to look forward to… seeing my auntie and nan one more time. Leaving these 2 behind was also sad, but I had another stop to look forward too… seeing my close friend in Belgium.

On Sunday however the day has come to say goodbye to the last part of my holiday and that was the hardest. There was no more fun stops to look forward to. There was just a 2h journey on the ferry and around 3h of drive back home. Home when there is nobody to greet me. Then waking up to work again at 6:20am the following day. That’s the least favourite part, despite the fact that I actually like my job.

I got back home on Sunday night at 10pm and unpacked some suitcases. I ate and by the time I went to sleep it was around 1am. Despite the fact that I didn't look forward to going back to work, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 and drove there.

It was nice to see my boss and some colleagues. Unfortunately it was his last hour in my office and he spent it packing his stuff and moving to the office upstairs. The rest of the day I spent in a company of another colleague, who I really didn't want to see in my office. Throughout my holiday I was hoping that once he is taken away from quality team he will no longer be assigned a desk where I work, but this hasn't happened.

It's not that I hate him or anything like this. He is a nice guy. He loves to do everything at a super speed though and becuase of this he makes many mistakes, which we then have to correct. Until my holiday there was me, my boss and another inspector working together in this office. We made a great team. Between the 3 of us, we could solve any issue. I really can't see why this had to change.

Now my boss is working upstairs, currently on his own. The other inspector is setting up machines, because we are short of stuff and I am there on my won, trying not to fall asleep, while the other guy thinks he found himself a new secretary.

Leaving work at 4:20pm it was raining and already getting dark outside. It was also dark outside when I got up and drove to work. Of course! The clocks changed while I was on holiday. I barely noticed it while I was in Poland, because I didn't have to get up to work and the weather was nice. I could enjoy a good chunk of a daylight before it got dark outside. None of this for me for 4 days of the work day.

That's when I decided... I am not coming back to work the following day. I was #homesick, tired, sleepy and grumpy. Lack of daylight only made it worse. I can not work like this. I will only make mistakes and get myself in trouble. My #mentalhealth is too important for me to just try and push through this for the next 3 days until the weekend. I needed to rest and rebalance myself.

At just gone 6am, when my alarms went off, I picked up my phone and send a text to my boss that I am not feeling well and will not come to work today. Then I carried on sleeping until 8am. When I woke up, I saw his reply:

'Don't abandon me with these idiots lol'

This made me smile. I replied that I will be back when I feel better. And I will. Most likely tomorrow. Today is a day for me and my mental health. I started it with a big cup of coffee and scrolling through my social media and replying to comments. I tried writing, but it didn't flow. I still had a lot of unpacking and tyding up to do, but I'll do it little by little. I moved some more stuff from my car inside the house and found places to store them. My plants also looked like they missed me badly. Especially orchids were crying for water, so I brought them to kitchen and soaked while tyiding up the kitchen. Next I made myself breakfast/lunch and read some articles.

I got my first payouts from articles and I decided to convert my HBD to Hive and hive.swap and I got myself my first land and a few seeds to plant in dCrop. I explored the game a little more and realised that completing seasonal quests is out of my reach at this time, because I need a lot of seeds and some selling quests are not from this season, so it will be a while before I can participate more in the game. Oh well, that's another new journey started. I will just plant the seeds I have and slowly buy more seeds and lands and grow my inventory.

Breakfast made me a bit sleepy, so I cuddled my blanket and drifted off to sleep. You could barely call it a nap. I slept for 3 hours, until my phone woke my up. My ex lodger came over to collect deposit. It was a good timing, as I still had a few hours of daylight to do stuff around the house.

I collected dirty clothes and set up the washing machine. I tidied up my living room, so I could walk in and out without tripping. I finished up my moving my plants to their usual places and washed all the dishes laying around.

Finally everything had its place and I felt much, much better. I prepared myself a cup of decaf coffee and sat down to writing. This time it flows... It might not be a mastepiece, but I just had to get it all off my chest. Right after I finish writing I am planning to take a nice, long bath in epson salts. This will complete my mental health day and hopefully also make me sleepy enough to head to bed at a reasonable hour. I will grab a second part of Japanese comic to read in bed instead of watching anything and hopefully I will wake up with a new energy to work tomorrow morning.

Until next time 💙