Time to come clean on a few things

Yeah, I've been a bit quiet these past four days.  Some of it is just due to working almost eight hours non-stop each weekday now (I have very limited internet access, through my phone only for now, during my 30 minute lunch breaks), but much of it is due to a couple of recurring nuisances that seem to be making their first appearances in a few years.

The first and relatively minor nuisance is that for the past few days, my heartrate and pulse are elevated.  Just tested at 150/99 blood pressure with 113 resting pulse, with earlier pulse tests reaching as high as 137/minute.  This is due to my having sleep apnea, as well as dealing with with a weight that hasn't gone down for a while.  The second part is preventable, I know, but the first really does wonders on my heart, especially if I am carrying excess weight (which unfortunately I am, ever since I had to give up long-distance walking a couple of months ago due to strains in the muscles surrounding my right patella).  Having sleep apnea alone lowered my actuarial life expectancy to around 60 years, according to a life insurance report done about five years ago.  That's when I was a bit healthier-feeling than now.

But that is minor compared to what seems to be coming back for the first time in at least three years.  I usually get a bit down as the days get shorter, but I rarely have a racing heart and an absolute feeling of dread and uncertainty associated with work.  It's odd that after only two weeks of regular work that I would be experiencing these symptoms, symptoms that I associate with extreme stress and depression, based on events back in October 2002 and September-October 2007.  But when I found myself thinking during my first day of long-term subbing that I didn't want to be teaching, that I felt as though I were useless out there (which is not all that strange of a feeling when dealing with students in an in-patient rehab setting who are coming off of their drugs; they do tend to refuse to cooperate and to curse at staff regularly), that worried me.  But after a week in which I had students only one day out of five but which I had a helluva lot of paperwork (a two month backlog of educational assessments that hadn't been done before I arrived, despite these reports needing to have been done within 48 hours of the student arriving), I find myself on a Sunday night with a racing pulse and a feeling of abject insecurity about what I'm doing, why I'm even doing it, and if it's worth it.

Until that resolves itself, it is hard to focus on reading or reviewing.  I will try to do some of both to divert myself, but it may be a long slog ahead for me, especially since I don't have the money or health insurance to pay for certain tests that I probably need.  But since this is a temp job on paper, if this continues, I may have to ask to be released, so I can get the stress levels down.  But maybe it'll be better after a day or two.  However, all I know is that I just don't have that posting mojo just yet and I hope I can get my house in order so I can rediscover it.

So please, don't suggest that I do X or Y.  I know there are several options, some of which I wish I could take but can't afford to (literally, as well as figuratively) at this time.  All I'm doing is just writing out some concerns so I don't feel obliged to post things until I myself am ready to do so.  See you around...sometime, hopefully this week.