Here’s hoping for a quiet weekend. At least things are going well in my main job. Everything else though…

Tonight will be my first shift in the pub with the new manager. I’ve met her already when I got introduced Tuesday night but it takes me a long time to get used to a person so I feel comfortable. Hopefully she’ll be pretty laid back and leave me to get on with things. I’m anxious about it, worrying about what might happen – trying to plan how I’ll handle various hypothetical scenarios. But I just don’t know her well enough to predict how she will behave. So I’ll be stepping into the unknown when my shift starts.

There’s other stuff going on outside work that I can’t go into yet that is causing me a huge amount of worry as well. While I usually handle stress in particular areas of my life by compartmentalising and concentrating on other things, in this particular case it’s intense enough to leak out and affect everything else. The end result is that I find my stress levels increase and the danger is that it affects my ability to cope with my normal routine. I can’t concentrate as well and I experience sensory overload much more easily, which then makes it more likely that I will shut down. I’m worried about shutting down because I am caring for my wife while she is ill, and I am obviously no use to her if I can’t function. So the stress and worry is spiralling upwards because I feel anxious about worrying in the first place. It’s completely irrational. It makes me want to scream!

So I’m sitting here hoping that things run smoothly over the weekend. I’m not sure how much more stress I can handle and I’m inclined to head for the hills at the first sign of trouble. But there’s this little part of me that’s watching with interest to see exactly how high the levels can get before something breaks. Seems I can’t get away from analysing myself the whole time.