In flux

It's been a strange week, mentally.

As a consequence of me having to force myself into a routine of getting up early in the morning and going to bed early, my mood has been fluctuating quite randomly. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights I didn't get much sleep at all, but Wednesday (last) night was the first night which I did finally get a good kip (about 8 hours). I'm hoping I can maintain this now and I've passed the 3-4 day threshold so hopefully things will stabilise.

The symptoms? Well, mainly confusion, paranoia, depression and a tense restless feeling all over my body - not particularly pleasant. On both Monday and Tuesday I felt very tired all day (getting up at 7.15am is not my idea of fun), but actually did feel mentally quite good (could think clearly, generally contented, excited about the new job, in a sociable mood). However, Wednesday (yesterday) was the nasty one. I started the day in the freezing cold, with a feeling of dread (thinking "oh no, I can't handle this!") and all day I felt extremely tensed up and just couldn't relax. I couldn't think straight at all and felt spaced out. When I feel like that I really want to hide away in a dark room somewhere, out of sight, but being a call centre building and doing group activities all day, there was no chance of that! When talking to people I couldn't make eye contact and could barely string a sentence together! Not a nice experience.

After a decent sleep, today was quite good. In the morning, I felt similar to Wednesday, but come the afternoon, my mood had stabilised to that of contentment and happiness. It's scary when such mood swings affect your perception of the world, but I'm hoping as my body adjusts to the regularity, all that will pass.

As for the job, it's going ok. The first couple of days dragged on, but now the shifts seem to breeze past - which is a good thing. One real perk to working is that it feels so damn good when I'm finished and the shift is over. Leisure time really means something to me now! As I mentioned before, we are doing 4 weeks training before starting properly, but I've spent most of the past 4 days yawning and twiddling my thumbs. We have just been familiarising with the customer database system (which, by the way, is produced by Graham Technology), so far, and doing silly "ice-breaker" things. It's hardly rocket science. So far, I've chatted to a lot of my colleagues but not made any real friends - I think this is largely due to my mood swings impairing my social skills.

I haven't been to the gym for 6 days now, largely due to tiredness, but I intend to start going again soon. I was going to go today after work but I was lured out to the pub for a couple of beers by my old buddy Martin Tocker, who was in Glasgow doing Xmas shopping.

Well, so far so good - I reckon as long as I stick to a good, regular sleep pattern, the work may potentially become enjoyable in some aspects. Fingers crossed! I've got a busy weekend ahead; going out tomorrow for a double birthday celebration and the much-hyped flat party is on Saturday! My concern is that these festivities might place my sleep pattern back in jeopardy but I'll just have to wait and see.