Very tired!

I feel exhausted. I am definitely getting old.

We had a busy time last weekend doing chores on Saturday, then preparing for a social event in the evening, attending and helping clear up, then on Sunday completing the tiling for the bathroom floor in the pouring rain (the tile cutter had to go outside because of the mess and all the water it chucks out when it is operating).  

My back and knees are protesting at having spent all day Sunday getting up and down onto a hard floor and carrying stuff up and down the stairs, and I am not sleeping well due my age and, I regret to say, my hormones.

All this is making me very tired during the day and meaning I am not really focused on my work and not getting through it at the rate I need to if I am to meet my deadlines. And what’s worse is that I am now so tired I don’t care.

I used to think the getting old and tired thing was a myth and it was how you felt in your head that mattered. If you felt young and lively, then you could keep going physically so long as you were in a reasonable condition of fitness. Possibly that is the problem, in that I have been a couch potato for so long now and over indulged in things I know aren’t good for me and it’s a long road back.

I also have to say that work is a nightmare. Not necessarily the people (although they have their moments and life would be a lot easier if I didn’t have any staff with their personal baggage) but the pressure now to do the same or more with less resource. Many people would say that I am lucky to still be in a job and maybe they’re right, but at times it doesn’t seem worth it.

God knows how our generation and those yet to come are going to cope with working until their late sixties or longer, if we are tired of it all in our early fifties. Surely it can’t be right to put a 68 or 69 year old in front of a class of unruly and rowdy teenagers or entrust them with the medical care of someone in a life threatening condition? I know that not all old people lose their marbles and many of them are perfectly capable of doing complex work even into their seventies and eighties, but physical robustness and memory isn’t the same at 68 as it was at 48, and that is impossible to deny. Even with someone fit, healthy and active, things do slow down and deteriorate to a degree.

I can’t help feeling that we will all be working much later and as a consequence having much shorter retirements not just because we are older but because we will all be more worn out with the extra years of work. Our children’s generation will be even harder hit, since at least some of us have protected benefits and have had a few years of decent pay to put something by. They will be so poor with the cost of everything and continuing economic decline they will be even worse off.

It is 2.30pm, and I feel like going home and lying down with my moggies for a good two hour sleep. I know this feeling will pass, and in an hour or so I will feel better, but just at the moment that seems a wonderful idea. They don’t have a sleeping room at the Town Hall – perhaps I’ll suggest it. I bet there would be a queue!