Overworked but nothing too serious

Last updated on March 15th, 2024 at 08:09 am

I forgot to tell you about how overworked I am.

The way it works here is that you want to talk about one situation, but there’s an even heavier situation. In nature, the strongest wins—the heaviest thing on your mind gets to be produced first. As an overworked human, I can’t believe that something as little as flies, mosquitoes, heat, power outages, risk of food spoiling, and noise pollution amongst other minute things can take precedence in my diary.

I am overworked and I am not screaming enough. In my appraisal, my boss says that I am diligent and that I even do things outside the scope of my work. It’s a positive comment, but it doesn’t translate to more money. It just means more work. More work because I don’t want to lose my job. I haul myself up the stairs of my office, completely exhausted. Productivity and hustle culture is good, never to be caught resting, but my brain, poor thing, whispers in my head, rest. She wants to rest. My sweating armpit, post-bus Kungfu, laughs at my brain. My light wallet post-transport inflation mocks my brain. Even my dirty shoes and sore feet roll their eyes. My brain effectively keeps quiet.

I sit and look around with a mix of pity, amusement, mockery, and apathy. Throw in every feels, sis! I can’t get through this day, I know it. Okay, that was a slight exaggeration, I can’t get through this day without music in my ears. I slide in my earpiece and begin with very fast-paced music. It’s only eight-thirty in the morning. In about two hours, my ears warn me, then my phone warns me. I’ve had the noise for too long in my head. I sigh but can’t stop. Rugger’s ‘Useless’ plays next, if only I could be. 

You see, I need the distraction. Picture this: I’m sitting under a pile of clothes (don’t ask how I got there), a heavy pile of clothes, then someone dumps even more clothes on the pile. I’m trying to tell them that I can’t breathe, but they don’t hear. More clothes keep getting piled on me. I was supposed to fold the clothes, but I had barely touched the initial pile when more came. In real life, I would leave the pile of clothes and sleep on them, but with work, I would get sacked for abdicating my duties…well, mine and one or two or ten more duties from my boss who by the way is really cool.

So, I play the music for two more hours, furiously ticking my to-do list. One hint: the to-do list never ends. My alarm reminds me that it’s time to pause work, something about preventing burnout, I snooze the alarm and continue to work. If I don’t do it, who will? The alarm rings again, girl, I can’t pause right now; my boss just sent about five voice notes to me, I haven’t listened to all of them but that’s nothing less than ten new tasks on my desk. Back to that picture: I drown under more piles of clothes.

This time, the alarm says I should call my paternal parent. I swear, I’m almost done with work. Just this, this last one then I’ll do just that… Burna Boy’s ‘Igbo and Shayo’ sings from my phone, pausing the music that was playing, it’s my boss. For the next three minutes, I get more instructions: follow up on this and that and oh, the other one. I laugh, that’s my street rep here, I laugh a lot. I laugh because, on the flip side, I’ll cry. So, I write down all the instructions and I don’t forget to call my paternal parent, I just postpone it. 

The rule here is to kiss ass. You need your job? Kiss ass. The intensity varies but you have to do it. It’s not just about keeping your job, it’s also about the peace of mind that you need, ironically. So, add the stress of kissing ass to my never-ending work, what do you get?

Do the math.