I’m tired. Today I’m finishing up day seven of an eleven day work stretch—that’s correct, I’m working eleven days in a row. This is something that might be meant for younger social workers than me.

In addition to that, for six of the past seven days I was on call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes doing call is a lot of nothing, just a constant reminder to carry the pager and cell phone and not to drink alcohol; this wasn’t one of those call weeks. Instead, I got waken up at 1:30 am one night and 3:30 am another for things that didn’t have to be dealt with until the morning (or, at 3:30 am, by someone else–they called the wrong guy).

That said, I’ve come to the conclusion that these long work stretches are okay–as far as the work goes. Work tends to be my big priority–because, you know, I do need to eat and pay the mortgage–and as such, it gets the energy and attention it deserves.

Working out–and eating properly–don’t.

We all engage in self-destructive behavior from time to time, some of us more than others. My self-destructive behaviors are eating and not working out–yes, better than trying to actually hurt myself, but self-destructive nonetheless. These happen when I’m tired like I am now.

I’ll talk more about this next time.