I can't get no sleep...

What do you do if you can't sleep? It's the worst thing ever - you're tired and know you need to nod off soon otherwise your head will be hitting your desk leaving keyboard imprints on your cheeks come 10am the next morning - but you just CAN'T. Your body is betraying you out of spite and your mind won't wind down. I've had this problem for the last few nights now. My normal pumpkin hour is between 10 and 11pm. I know that if I'm not trying to get to sleep by 11 on a school night, I'm screwed. And yet there I am, bolt upright in bed at 1,2,3 in the morning onwards with my mind whirring. And I know exactly what's keeping me awake. Work.

Was it Margaret Thatcher who said she only needed 4 hours sleep per night? Nuts to that, missus. I can't function on anything less than seven - and that's just it, I haven't been functioning. It's felt like I'm just sort of, well, existing. Gone are the reckless days of uni when I could easily manage an all-nighter writing an essay or crawl home in the small hours only to face a full day of lectures (except for the time when I'd had one too many nocturnal sessions and fell asleep with my head in my hands during a lecture - only to fall off the bench with a thud when my elbow slipped off the desk). I've tried hot drinks, caffeine-free drinks, exercising at least three hours before bedtime, music, reading, writing...but I just can't shut my eyes because I'm worrying over work.

I don't like talking about work in too much detail here (you never know who is reading and all that), but it's visibly stressing me out. So I'll try to fill you in without the particulars. You see, there's a vacancy coming up in my department which my superiors have made clear they want me to go for. Which is great. But the more I think about it, the more I know that it's not the right job for me. It's at a higher level, but the money isn't much more than what I'm on now. The money's not the main issue though. It's the role itself. I'd be taking on things I'm not ready to take on, and giving up things I fought hard to get and I'm not ready to give up. I don't want my managers to think I'm not ambitious or have desires to move on elsewhere instead, though, because I don't. I do like my job. I'm still learning things everyday. But my head is saying that opportunities in my field don't come along very often, and my heart is saying I have to think about all the peripheral politics, too, (there are several issues I'm not going to go into now) and to trust my instincts. Sigh. You can see my dilemma, I hope.

And the more I think about it, the more I don't know what to do. I hope I know soon, though. Otherwise I can feel an overdose of Ovaltine or something equally vile coming along.