Now, I'm not going to pretend I'm one of those super-high flyers with my own PA and a string of people I refer to as "staff", but I do have a reasonably good job for an investment bank. Most of the time, it's fine - the hours aren't too mental - 9 until 6.30ish, but with an hour's commute each way, it can make it feel like a longer day than it actually is.
As I'm so exhausted at the moment, I decided to take off last Friday and Monday, to have a nice long weekend. It was lovely.
What was not so lovely was the return to work.
At 9 a.m. I was frantically trying to clear 200 emails. None of which actually mattered, if it came down to a life or death situation. Unfortunately my manager doesn't see it this way.
At 10 a.m. I was preparing for the monthly senior management meeting; I'm the most junior person who goes to this, so I really needed to be on my game. Unfortunately I felt like a cockroach had crawled up my nose and laid eggs in my brain.
At 11 a.m. I was sitting in the meeting. I literally have no idea what the content was. All I could think, on a loop over and over in my brain was, "I'm going to vomit on the Managing Director. I'm actually going to vomit on him. That's not a good career move."
At midday I was laid out on the floor of a toilet cubicle, regurgitating my healthy breakfast (a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and some blackcurrant squash).
It's worse than it should be for a couple of reasons: I can't tell anyone at work because it's not exactly a family-friendly organisation. Oh, they have all the right policies in place, but time and time again I've seen women marginalised because they've left to have children. Despite there being 50 women in my department, not a single one works part time. Because it's not allowed. Not officially of course - the policies are in place to support flexible working. It just doesn't happen.
Even worse, redundancies are on the horizon, and although I'm a relatively high performer, I know that if they find out I'm up the duff, it's significantly more likely that my role will suddenly and mysteriously become null and void.
So I'm trying to be an uber-high performer, putting in the hours, getting more and more exhausted... and trying not to vomit on the MD.
Just came across your blog. Read all the posts and added you to favourites. :D Please keep posting!
ReplyDeleteI'm 15 weeks and I know everyone will tell you this and you won't believe them (I didn't either) but pregnancy does improve. A little. The sickness (and the snomit!) you describe was my miserable experience for the first 13-14 weeks. I told work (nice sorta family orientated law firm) at 12 weeks but by that point, things were improving a bit with pregnancy. I haven't been sick for a week and, though I still have to fight the nausea, I haven't felt this good since before I got pregnant!
Wish you all the best - I shall be keeping an eye open for new blog posts!
PS - cravings do NOT stop. I crave random things, decide I can't face random things, I'm always hungry, always thirsty and always needing the loo. :D