And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep

Sleep is a wonderful word and I’m not getting enough for the past few weeks. I love working for the UN especially during conferences or inter-session meetings but it requires a lot of work and overtime. Like big time overtime especially at the beginning of each week. I didn’t even have a weekend this time and now that it’s Friday, I’m really beginning to feel its toll.

I would be waking up in the morning at 6 but would try to stay in the bed the latest that I can, i.e. 6:30, then to prepare and be at the conference center at 7:30 because we open our registration at 8:00. I thought that by closing my registration desk at 5:00, I’d be able to go home and take some rest, but I was given instructions to stay till 6:30 because of some other meetings in the evening. I’m sure it’s even more tiring for those who attend these meetings but for me, having to wake up early and stay late is killing me. Honestly, its the intensive work for the past three weeks, squeezed schedules and just shorter sleep. Add to that some activities outside work that of course is part of my social life and then of course some family time! Talk about juggling everything!

To give you an example how tired I am, the Tropa met last week to discuss our activities and the coming Jugendtreffen this weekend. We even fixed it and all but on Wednesday came an e-mail saying… "Meeting for tonight, here is the agenda"… my mind was completely blank. I had to send a message and say, “Meeting?!? Why? Where? And when? The Tropa had to laugh. But trying with all my might to be there and try to contribute was really tough… around the latter part of the evening, I was kinda slumped on my seat and was just listening na lang… There was even a point that I was irritable and luckily I noticed right away and just shut up. When I went home and was finally in bed at 1 am, I just thought of waking up at 6 and said to myself, gotta go to bed the soonest just to be able to sleep longer… even 5 minutes longer…

And so I’m slowly counting the days and try to keep myself from drinking too much coffee just to wake myself otherwise I’d be a nervous-wreck with the caffeine overdose. Right now, in this state of lack of sleep, I would even thought of hiding under my office table and get a 5 minutes nap if not for the fact that I don’t have a proper office and the place is full of see-through glass…

Oh well, as they say, this too shall pass and I would just like to wait for the time when I won’t have to say to myself, "miles to go before I sleep" but instead, "have a good night."