What Overwork Made Me Realise About My Health.
We may sometimes be guilty of putting the wrong priorities first.
I will admit that I have some form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It’s not a severe thing indeed, but the problem with me is that I hate to owe anyone anything.
Give me a week to do an assignment, and I will blitz through it in a day or two because I don’t want to “owe” that assignment to anyone. The OCD lies in not wanting to owe anyone anything, and it isn’t that fully exhibited because I keep most of that internalised.
But what happens in the case of work when we’re dealing with multiple different assignments and projects all at once?
It depends on how well we juggle it.
I mean, adding to the weekday 9–6 grind is the fact that me (and the girlfriend/prospective fiancee/wife) did volunteer to serve at her church’s children’s ministry for a continuous 12-week stint on Sundays, and that I have my own church’s volunteering work to do, and I do feel knackered (British slang for “tired”) some days.
To the point where I start the week on a Monday and I wake up wondering “wait, tomorrow’s Friday already?”
Yes, it does feel that bad.
And unfortunately, me being introverted in nature requires a lot of alone time, which I don’t have much of a luxury at the moment. The bullets and missiles are free flow, and I feel like I’m in a constant war zone.
The problem with that is that my sleep cycle gets affected — it always feels insufficient, and I sometimes want to take naps in the middle of the day even though I can’t.
Because the glutamate-GABA balance in my brain is affected when it remains active late into the night:
The problem with this physical fatigue is that I do end up looking for energy boosters — and they come in the form of processed carbohydrates. I’ve been justifying my snacking on more of those lately, though it’s not the best thing to feed myself with:
Which also comes at a cost to myself. The belt feels slightly tighter around my waist now. It’s much easier for me to tell myself to stay off carbohydrate snacks, but harder for me to slap my own hand or my own mouth to stop myself from ingesting them.
You know, ice cream. Frozen yoghurt. Bubble tea. Pastries. Any Asian or Western snacks that one can find off the streets of Singapore.
Mentally, I try to justify it by saying “treat yourself, you’ve had a long day”.
But is it really a treat? Or am I just setting myself up for more health issues in the long term?
Unfortunately, it is the latter option — I’d be setting myself up for more health issues in the long term.
It’s a mental struggle, though. The distaste of not wanting to owe anyone anything is the big elephant in the room that I have to deal with. Especially if I have a week to do something, then why do I want to rush it within a day?
It’s not as if the reward for harder work is more money — the reward for hard work is, of course, more work.
And that “more work” actually contributes to an even more intensified vicious cycle where I keep on rushing things because I don’t want to owe anyone anything.
How unfortunate it is that this mindset of mine is one of the big issues that I have to deal with to get to the point of reducing the consumption of processed carbohydrates!
I know that there are many people out there who are overworked as well, and many do resort to snacking on carbohydrate-rich comfort foods as a form of escapism, while they’re facing issues with their stress levels, and that also can affect their sleep:
But we also do have to bear in mind that these carbohydrates can be terribly addictive too, and that further exacerbates the issue!
Working adults tend to get immersed in their own work and put their health as a secondary priority. But what happens one day when the balance scales are tipped and we find ourselves on the wrong side of the scale? Healthcare isn’t cheap these days, let’s be mindful of that!
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